LIFE ABROAD--SWITZERLAND TO VENICE--THIRD PERIOD OF AUTHORSHIP.--CHILDE
HAROLD, III., IV.--MANFRED.
On the 25th of April, 1816, Byron embarked for Ostend. From the "burning
marl" of the staring streets he planted his foot again on the dock with a
genuine exultation.
Once more upon the waters, yet once more,
And the waves bound beneath me as a steed
That knows her rider. Welcome to the roar!
But he brought with him a relic of English extravagance, sotting out on
his land travels in a huge coach, copied from that of Napoleon taken at
Genappe, and being accompanied by Fletcher, Rushton, Berger, a Swiss, and
Polidori, a physician of Italian descent, son of Alfieri's secretary, a
man of some talent but indiscreet. A question arises as to the source from
which he obtained the means for these and subsequent luxuries, in striking
contrast with Goldsmith's walking-stick, knapsack, and flute. Byron's
financial affairs are almost inextricably confused. We can, for instance,
nowhere find a clear statement of the result of the suit regarding the
Rochdale Estates, save that he lost it before the Court of Exchequer, and
that his appeal to the House of Lords was still unsettled in 1822. The
sale of Newstead to Colonel Wildman in 1818, for 90,000 _l_., went mostly
to pay off mortgages and debts. In April, 1819, Mrs. Leigh writes, after a
last sigh over this event:--"Sixty thousand pounds was secured by his
(Byron's) marriage settlement, the interest of which he receives for life,
and which ought to make him very comfortable." This is unfortunately
decisive of the fact that he did not in spirit adhere to the resolution
expressed to Moore never to touch a farthing of his wife's money, though
we may accept his statement to Medwin, that he twice repaid the dowry of
10,000 _l_. brought to him at the marriage, as in so far diminishing the
obligation. None of the capital of Lady Byron's family came under his
control till 1822, when, on the death of her mother, Lady Noel, Byron
arranged the appointment of referees, Sir Francis Burdett on his behalf,
Lord Dacre on his wife's. The result was an equal division of a property
worth about 7000 _l_ a year. While in Italy the poet received besides
about 10,000 _l_ for his writings--4000 _l_. being given for _Childe
Harold_ (iii., iv.), and _Manfred_. "Ne pas être dupe" was one of his
determinations, and, though he began by caring little for making money, he
was always fond of spending it. "I tell you it is too much," he said to
Murray, in returning a thousand guineas for the _Corinth_ and _Partsina_.
Hodgson, Moore, Bland, Thomas Ashe, the family of Lord Falkland, the
British Consul at Venice, and a host of others, were ready to testify to
his superb munificence. On the other hand, he would stint his pleasures,
or his benevolences, which were among them, for no one; and when he found
that to spend money he had to make it, he saw neither rhyme nor reason in
accepting less than his due. In 1817 he begins to dun Murray, declaring,
with a frankness in which we can find no fault, "You offer 1500 guineas
for the new canto (_C. H_., iv.). I won't take it. I ask 2500 guineas for
it, which you will either give or not, as you think proper." During the
remaining years of his life he grew more and more exact, driving hard
bargains for his houses, horses, and boats, and fitting himself, had he
lived, to be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the newly-liberated State,
from which he took a bond securing a fair interest for his loan. He made
out an account in _£. s. d_. against the ungrateful Dallas, and when Leigh
Hunt threatened to sponge upon him he got a harsh reception; but there is
nothing to countenance the view that Byron was ever really possessed by
the "good old gentlemanly vice" of which lie wrote. The Skimpoles and
Chadbands of the world are always inclined to talk of filthy lucre: it is
equally a fashion of really lavish people to boast that they are good men
of business.
We have only a few glimpses of Byron's progress. At Brussels the
Napoleonic coach was set aside for a more serviceable caleche. During his
stay in the Belgian capital lie paid a visit to the scene of Waterloo,
wrote the famous stanzas beginning, "Stop, for thy tread is on an empire's
dust!" and in unpatriotic prose, recorded his impressions of a plain which
appeared to him to "want little but a better cause" to make it vie in
interest with those of Platea and Marathon.
The rest of his journey lay up the Rhine to Basle, thence to Berne,
Lausanne, and Geneva, where he settled for a time at the Hôtel Secheron,
on the western shore of the lake. Here began the most interesting literary
relationship of his life, for here he first came in contact with the
impassioned Ariel of English verse, Percy Bysshe Shelley. They lived in
proximity after they left the hotel, Shelley's headquarters being at Mont
Alégre, and Byron's for the remainder of the summer at the Villa Diodati;
and their acquaintance rapidly ripened into an intimacy which, with some
interruptions, extended over the six remaining years of their joint lives.
The place for an estimate of their mutual influence belongs to the time of
their Italian partnership. Meanwhile, we hear of them mainly as
fellow-excursionists about the lake, which on one occasion departing from
its placid poetical character, all but swallowed them both, along with
Hobhouse, off Meillerie. "The boat," says Byron, "was nearly wrecked near
the very spot where St. Preux and Julia were in danger of being drowned.
It would have been classical to have been lost there, but not agreeable. I
ran no risk, being so near the rocks and a good swimmer; but our party
wore wet and incommoded." The only anxiety of Shelley, who could not swim,
was, that no one else should risk a life for his. Two such revolutionary
or such brave poets were, in all probability, never before nor since in a
storm in a boat together. During this period Byron complains of being
still persecuted. "I was in a wretched state of health and worse spirits
when I was in Geneva; but quiet and the lake--better physicians than
Polidori--soon set me up. I never led so moral a life as during my
residence in that country, but I gained no credit by it. On the contrary,
there is no story so absurd that they did not invent at my cost. I was
watched by glasses on the opposite side of the lake, and by glasses, too,
that must have had very distorted optics. I was waylaid in my evening
drives. I believe they looked upon me as a man-monster." Shortly after his
arrival in Switzerland he contracted an intimacy with Miss Clairmont, a
daughter of Godwin's second wife, and consequently a connexion by marriage
of the Shelleys, with whom she was living, which resulted in the birth of
a daughter, Allegra, at Great Marlow, in February, 1817. The noticeable
events of the following two months are a joint excursion to Chamouni, and
a visit in July to Madame de Staël at Coppet, in the course of which he
met Frederick Schlegel. During a wet week, when the families were reading
together some German ghost stories, an idea occurred of imitating them,
the main result of which was Mrs. Shelley's _Frankenstein_. Byron
contributed to the scheme a fragment of _The Vampire_, afterwards
completed and published in the name of his patron by Polidori. The
eccentricities of this otherwise amiable physician now began to give
serious annoyance; his jealousy of Shelley grew to such a pitch that it
resulted in the doctor's giving a challenge to the poet, at which the
latter only laughed; but Byron, to stop further outbreaks of the kind,
remarked, "Recollect that, though Shelley has scruples about duelling, I
have none, and shall be at all times ready to take his place." Polidori
had ultimately to be dismissed, and, after some years of vicissitude,
committed suicide.
The Shelleys left for England in September, and Byron made an excursion
with Hobhouse through the Bernese Oberland. They went by the Col de Jaman
and the Simmenthal to Thun; then up the valley to the Staubbach, which he
compares to the tail of the pale horse in the Apocalypse--not a very
happy, though a striking comparison. Thence they proceeded over the
Wengern to Grindelwald and the Rosenlau glacier; then back by Berne,
Friburg, and Yverdun to Diodati. The following passage in reference to
this tour may be selected as a specimen of his prose description, and of
the ideas of mountaineering before the days of the Alpine Club:--
"Before ascending the mountain, went to the torrent again, the sun upon it
forming a rainbow of the lower part, of all colours but principally purple
and gold, the bow moving as you move. I never saw anything like this; it
is only in the sunshine.... Left the horses, took off my coat, and went to
the summit, 7000 English feet above the level of the sea, and 5000 feet
above the valley we left in the morning. On one side our view comprised
the Jungfrau, with all her glaciers; then the Dent d'Argent, shining like
truth; then the Eighers and the Wetterhorn. Heard the avalanches falling
every five minutes. From where we stood on the Wengern Alp we had all
these in view on one side; on the other, the clouds rose up from the
opposite valley, curling up perpendicular precipices, like the foam of the
ocean of hell during a spring tide; it was white and sulphury, and
immeasurably deep in appearance.... Arrived at the Grindelwald; dined;
mounted again, and rode to the higher glacier--like a frozen hurricane;
starlight beautiful, but a devil of a path. Passed whole woods of withered
pines, all withered; trunks stripped and barkless, branches lifeless; done
by a single winter. Their appearance reminded me of me and my family."
Students of _Manfred_ will recognize whole sentences, only slightly
modified in its verse. Though Byron talks with contempt of authorship,
there is scarce a fine phrase in his letters or journal which is not
pressed into the author's service. He turns his deepest griefs to artistic
gain, and uses five or six times for literary purposes the expression
which seems to have dropped from him naturally about his household gods
being shivered on his hearth. His account of this excursion concludes with
a passage equally characteristic of his melancholy and incessant
self-consciousness:--
"In the weather for this tour, I have been very fortunate.... I was
disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, &c.... But in all this the
recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home
desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me
here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the
avalanche, the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the
cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled
me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the
glory around, above, and beneath me."
Such egotism in an idle man would only provoke impatience; but Byron was,
during the whole of this period, almost preternaturally active. Detained
by bad weather at Ouchy for two days (Juno 26, 27), he wrote the _Prisoner
of Chillon_, which, with its noble introductory sonnet on Bonnivard, in
some respects surpasses any of his early romances. The opening lines,--
Lake Leman lies by Chillon's walls;
A thousand feet in depth below,
Its massy waters meet and flow,--
bring before us in a few words the conditions of a hopeless bondage. The
account of the prisoner himself, and of the lingering deaths of the
brothers; the first frenzy of the survivor, and the desolation which
succeeds it--
I only loved: I only drew
The accursed breath of dungeon dew,--
the bird's song breaking on the night of his solitude; his growing
enamoured of despair, and regaining his freedom with a sigh, are all
strokes from a master hand. From the same place, at the same date, he
announces to Murray the completion of the third canto of _Childe Harold_.
The productiveness of July is portentous. During that month he wrote the
_Monody on Sheridan, The Dream, Churchill's Grave_, the _Sonnet to Lake
Leman, Could I remount the River of my Years_, part of _Manfred,
Prometheus_, the _Stanzas to Augusta_, beginning,
My sister! My sweet sister! If a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine;
and the terrible dream of _Darkness_, which at least in the ghastly power
of the close, where the survivors meet by the lurid light of a dim altar
fire, and die of each other's hideousness, surpasses Campbell's _Last
Man_[1]. At Lausanne the poet made a pilgrimage to the haunts of Gibbon,
broke a sprig from his acacia-tree, and carried off some rose leaves from
his garden. Though entertaining friends, among them Mr. M.G. Lewis and
Scrope Davies, he systematically shunned "the locust swarm of English
tourists," remarking on their obtrusive platitudes; as when he heard one
of them at Chamouni inquire, "Did you ever see anything more truly rural?"
Ultimately he got tired of the Calvinistic Genevese--one of whom is said
to have swooned as he entered the room--and early in October set out with
Hobhouse for Italy. They crossed the Simplon, and proceeded by the Lago
Maggiore to Milan, admiring the pass, but slighting the somewhat hothouse
beauties of the Borromean Islands. From Milan he writes, pronouncing its
cathedral to be only a little inferior to that of Seville, and delighted
with "a correspondence, all original and amatory, between Lucretia Borgia
and Cardinal Bembo." He secured a lock of the golden hair of the Pope's
daughter, and wished himself a cardinal.
[Footnote 1: This only appeared in 1831, but Campbell claims to have
given Byron in conversation the suggestion of the subject.]
At Verona, Byron dilates on the amphitheatre, as surpassing anything he
had seen even in Greece, and on the faith of the people in the story of
Juliet, from whose reputed tomb he sent some pieces of granite to Ada and
his nieces. In November we find him settled in Venice, "the greenest isle
of his imagination." There he began to form those questionable alliances
which are so marked a feature of his life, and so frequent a theme in his
letters, that it is impossible to pass them without notice. The first of
his temporary idols was Mariana Segati, "the wife of a merchant of
Venice," for some time his landlord. With this woman, whom he describes as
an antelope with oriental eyes, wavy hair, voice like the cooing of a
dove, and the spirit of a Bacchante, he remained on terms of intimacy
for about eighteen months, during which their mutual devotion was only
disturbed by some outbursts of jealousy. In December the poet took lessons
in Armenian, glad to find in the study something craggy to break his mind
upon. Ho translated into that language a portion of St. Paul's Epistle to
the Corinthians. Notes on the carnival, praises of _Christabel_,
instructions about the printing of _Childe Harold_ (iii.), protests
against the publication under his name of some spurious "domestic poems,"
and constant references, doubtfully domestic, to his Adriatic lady, fill
up the records of 1816. On February 15, 1817, he announces to Murray the
completion of the first sketch of _Manfred_, and alludes to it in a
bantering manner as "a kind of poem in dialogue, of a wild metaphysical
and inexplicable kind;" concluding, "I have at least rendered it _quite
impossible_ for the stage, for which my intercourse with Drury Lane has
given me the greatest contempt."
About this time Byron seems to have entertained the idea of returning to
England in the spring, i.e. after a year's absence. This design, however,
was soon set aside, partly in consequence of a slow malarian fever, by
which he was prostrated for several weeks. On his partial recovery,
attributed to his having had neither medicine nor doctor, and a
determination to live till he had "put one or two people out of the
world," he started on an expedition to Rome.
His first stage was Arqua; then Ferrara, where he was inspired, by a sight
of the Italian poet's prison, with the _Lament of Tasso_; the next,
Florence, where he describes himself as drunk with the beauty of the
galleries. Among the pictures, he was most impressed with the mistresses
of Raphael and Titian, to whom, along with Giorgione, he is always
reverential; and he recognized in Santa Croce the Westminster Abbey of
Italy. Passing through Foligno, he reached his destination early in May,
and met his old friends, Lord Lansdowne and Hobhouse. The poet employed
his short time at Rome in visiting on horseback the most famous sites in
the city and neighbourhood--as the Alban Mount, Tivoli, Frascati, the
Falls of Terni, and the Clitumnus--re-casting the crude first draft of the
third act of _Manfred_, and sitting for his bust to Thorwaldsen. Of this
sitting the sculptor afterwards gave some account to his compatriot, Hans
Andersen: "Byron placed himself opposite to me, but at once began to put
on a quite different expression from that usual to him. 'Will you not sit
still?' said I. 'You need not assume that look.' 'That is my expression,'
said Byron. 'Indeed,' said I; and I then represented him as I wished. When
the bust was finished he said, 'It is not at all like me; my expression is
more unhappy.'" West, the American, who five years later painted his
lordship at Leghorn, substantiates the above half-satirical anecdote, by
the remark, "He was a bad sitter; he assumed a countenance that did not
belong to him, as though he were thinking of a frontispiece for _Chlde
Harold_." Thorwaldsen's bust, the first cast of which was sent to
Hobhouse, and pronounced by Mrs. Leigh to be the best of the numerous
likenesses of her brother, was often repeated. Professor Brandes, of
Copenhagen, introduces his striking sketch of the poet by a reference to
the model, that has its natural place in the museum named from the great
sculptor whose genius had flung into the clay the features of a character
so unlike his own. The bust, says the Danish critic, at first sight
impresses one with an undefinable classic grace; on closer examination the
restlessness of a life is reflected in a brow over which clouds seem to
hover, but clouds from which we look for lightnings. The dominant
impression of the whole is that of some irresistible power
(Unwiderstehlichkeit). Thorwaldsen, at a much later date (1829-1833)
executed the marble statue, first intended for the Abbey, which is now to
be seen in the library of Trinity College, in evidence that Cambridge is
still proud of her most brilliant son.
Towards the close of the month--after almost fainting at the execution by
guillotine of three bandits--he professes impatience to get back to
Mariana, and early in the next we find him established with her near
Venice, at the villa of La Mira, where for some time he continued to
reside. His letters of June refer to the sale of Newstead, the mistake of
Mrs. Leigh and others in attributing to him the _Tales of a Landlord_, the
appearance of _Lalla Rookh_, preparations for _Marino Faliero_, and the
progress of _Childe Harold_ iv. This poem, completed in September, and
published early in 1818 (with a dedication to Hobhouse, who had supplied
most of the illustrative notes), first made manifest the range of the
poet's power. Only another slope of ascent lay between him and the
pinnacle, over which shines the red star of _Cain_. Had Lord Byron's
public career closed when he left England, he would have been remembered
for a generation as the author of some musical minor verses, a clever
satire, a journal in verse exhibiting flashes of genius, and a series of
fascinating romances--also giving promise of higher power--which had
enjoyed a marvellous popularity. The third and fourth cantos of _Childe
Harold_ placed him on another platform, that of the _Dii Majores_ of
English verse. These cantos are separated from their predecessors, not by
a stage, but by a gulf. Previous to their publication he had only shown
how far the force of rhapsody could go; now he struck with his right hand,
and from the shoulder. Knowledge of life and study of Nature were the
mainsprings of a growth which the indirect influence of Wordsworth, and
the happy companionship of Shelley, played their part in fostering.
Faultlessness is seldom a characteristic of impetuous verse, never of
Byron's; and even in the later parts of the _Childe_ there are careless
lines, and doubtful images. "Self-exiled Harold wanders forth again,"
looking "pale and interesting;" but we are soon refreshed by a higher
note. No familiarity can distract from "Waterloo," which holds its own by
Barbour's "Bannockburn," and Scott's "Flodden." Sir Walter, referring to
the climax of the opening, and the pathetic lament of the closing lines,
generously doubts whether any verses in English surpass them in vigour.
There follows "The Broken Mirror," extolled by Jeffrey with an
appreciation of its exuberance of fancy, and negligence of diction; and
then the masterly sketch of Napoleon, with the implied reference to the
writer at the end.
The descriptions in both cantos perpetually rise from a basis of rhetoric
to a real height of poetry. Byron's "Rhine" flows, like the river itself,
in a stream of "exulting and abounding" stanzas. His "Venice" may be set
beside the masterpieces of Ruskin's prose. They are together the joint
pride of Italy and England. The tempest in the third canto is in verse a
splendid microcosm of the favourites, if not the prevailing mood, of the
writer's mind. In spite of manifest flaws, the nine stanzas beginning "It
is the hush of night," have enough in them to feed a high reputation. The
poet's dying day, his sun and moon contending over the Rhaetian hill, his
Thrasymene, Clitumnus, and Velino, show that his eye has grown keener, and
his imagery at least more terse, and that he can occasionally forgot
himself in his surroundings. The Drachenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, the Alps,
Lake Leman, pass before us like a series of dissolving views. But the
stability of the book depends on its being a Temple of Fame, as well as a
Diorama of Scenery. It is no mere versified Guide, because every
resting-place in the pilgrimage is made interesting by association with
illustrious memories. Coblontz introduces the tribute to Marceau; Clarens
an almost complete review, in five verses, of Rousseau; Lausanne and
Ferney the quintessence of criticism on Gibbon and Voltaire. A tomb in
Arqua suggests Petrarch; the grass-grown streets of Ferrara lead in the
lines on Tasso; the white walls of the Etrurian Athens bring back
Alfieri and Michael Angelo, and the prose bard of the hundred tales, and
Dante, "buried by the upbraiding shore," and--
The starry Galileo and his woes.
Byron has made himself so master of the glories and the wrecks of Rome,
that almost everything else that has been said of them seems superfluous.
Hawthorne, in his _Marble Fawn_, comes nearest to him; but Byron's
Gladiator and Apollo, if not his Laocoon, are unequalled. "The voice of
Marius," says Scott, "could not sound more deep and solemn among the ruins
of Carthage, than the strains of the pilgrim among the broken shrines and
fallen statues of her subduer." As the third canto has a fitting close
with the poet's pathetic remembrance of his daughter, so the fourth is
wound up with consummate art,--the memorable dirge on the Princess
Charlotte being followed by the address to the sea, which, enduring
unwrinkled through all its ebbs and flows, seems to mock at the mutability
of human life.
_Manfred_, his witch drama, as the author called it, has had a special
attraction for inquisitive biographers, because it has been supposed in
some dark manner to reveal the secrets of his prison house. Its lines have
been tortured, like the witches of the seventeenth century, to extort from
them the meaning of the "all nameless hour," and every conceivable horror
has been alleged as its _motif_. On this subject Goethe writes with a
humorous simplicity: "This singularly intellectual poet has extracted from
my _Faust_ the strongest nourishment for his hypochondria; but he has made
use of the impelling principles for his own purposes.... When a bold and
enterprising young man, he won the affections of a Florentine lady. Her
husband discovered the amour, and murdered his wife; but the murderer was
the same night found dead in the street, and there was no one to whom any
suspicion could be attached. Lord Byron removed from Florence, but these
spirits have haunted him all his life. This romantic incident explains
innumerable allusions," e.g.,--
I have shed
Blood, but not hers,--and yet her blood was shed.
Were it not for the fact that the poet had never seen the city in question
when he wrote the poem, this explanation would be more plausible than most
others, for the allusions are all to some lady who has been done to death.
Galt asserts that the plot turns on a tradition of unhallowed
necromancy--a human sacrifice, like that of Antinous attributed to
Hadrian. Byron himself says it has no plot, but he kept teasing his
questioners with mysterious hints, e.g. "It was the Staubbach and the
Jungfrau, and something else more than Faustus, which made me write
_Manfred_;" and of one of his critics he says to Murray, "It had a better
origin than he can devise or divine, for the soul of him." In any case
most methods of reading between its lines would, if similarly applied,
convict Sophocles, Schiller, and Shelley of incest, Shakespeare of murder,
Milton of blasphemy, Scott of forgery, Marlowe and Goethe of compacts with
the devil. Byron was no dramatist, but he had wit enough to vary at least
the circumstances of his projected personality. The memories of both
Fausts--the Elizabethan and the German--mingle, in the pages of this
piece, with shadows of the author's life; but to these it never gives, nor
could be intended to give, any substantial form.
_Manfred_ is a chaos of pictures, suggested by the scenery of
Lauterbrunnen and Grindelwald, half animated by vague personifications and
sensational narrative. Like _Harold_, and Scott's _Marmion_, it just
misses being a great poem. The Coliseum is its masterpiece of description,
the appeal, "Astarte, my beloved, speak to me," its nearest approach to
pathos. The lonely death of the hero makes an effective close to the moral
tumult of the preceding scenes. But the reflections, often striking, are
seldom absolutely fresh: that beginning,
The mind, which is immortal, makes itself
Requital for its good or evil thoughts,
Is its own origin of ill and end,
And its own place and time,
is transplanted from Milton with as little change as Milton made in
transplanting it from Marlowe. The author's own favourite passage, the
invocation to the sun (act iii., sc. 2), has some sublimity, marred by
lapses. The lyrics scattered through the poem sometimes open well,
e.g.,--
Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains;
They crowned him long ago,
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a null of snow;
but they cannot sustain themselves like true song-birds, and fall to the
ground like spent rockets. This applies to Byron's lyrics generally; turn
to the incantation in the _Deformed Transformed_: the first line and a
half are in tune,--
Beautiful shadow of Thetis's boy,
Who sleeps in the meadow whose grass grows o'er Troy.
Nor Sternhold nor Hopkins has more ruthlessly outraged our ears than the
next two--
From the red earth, like Adam, thy likeness I shape,
As the Being who made him, whose actions I ape(!)
Of his songs: "There be none of Beauty's daughters," "She walks in
beauty," "Maid of Athens," "I enter thy garden of roses," the translation
"Sons of the Greeks," and others, have a flow and verve that it is
pedantry to ignore; but in general Byron was too much of the earth earthy
to be a great lyrist. Some of the greatest have lived wild lives, but
their wings were not weighted with the lead of the love of the world.
The summer and early months of the autumn of 1817 were spent at La Mira,
and much of the poet's time was occupied in riding along the banks of the
Brenta, often in the company of the few congenial Englishmen who came in
his way; others, whom he avoided, avenged themselves by retailing stories,
none of which wore "too improbable for the craving appetites of their
slander-loving countrymen." In August he received a visit from Mr.
Hobhouse, and on this occasion drew up the remarkable document afterwards
given to Mr. M. G. Lewis for circulation in England, which appeared in the
_Academy_ of October 9th, 1869. In this document he says, "It has been
intimated to me that the persons understood to be the legal advisers of
Lady Byron have declared their lips to be sealed up on the cause of the
separation between her and myself. If their lips are sealed up they are
not sealed up by me, and the greatest favour they can confer upon me will
be to open them." He goes on to state, that he repents having consented to
the separation--will be glad to cancel the deed, or to go before any
tribunal, to discuss the matter in the most public manner; adding, that
Mr. Hobhouse (in whose presence he was writing) proposed, on his part, to
go into court, and ending with a renewed asseveration of his ignorance of
the allegations against him, and his inability to understand for what
purpose they had been kept back, "unless it was to sanction the most
infamous calumnies by silence." Hobhouse, and others, during the four
succeeding years, ineffectually endeavoured to persuade the poet to return
to England. Moore and others insist that Byron's heart was at home when
his presence was abroad, and that, with all her faults, he loved his
country still. Leigh Hunt, on the contrary, asserts that he cared nothing
for England or its affairs. Like many men of genius, Byron was never
satisfied with what he had at the time. "Romae Tibur amem ventosus Tibure
Romam." At Seaham he is bored to death, and pants for the excitement of
the clubs; in London society he longs for a desert or island in the
Cyclades; after their separation, he begins to regret his wife; after his
exile, his country. "Where," he exclaimed to Hobhouse, "is real comfort to
be found out of England?" He frequently fell into the mood in which he
wrote the verse,--
Yet I was born where men are proud to be,
Not without cause: and should I leave behind
Th'immortal island of the sage and free,
And seek me out a home by a remoter sea?
But the following, to Murray (June 7, 1819), is equally sincere. "Some of
the epitaphs at Ferrara pleased me more than the more splendid monuments
of Bologna; for instance--
'Martini Luigi
Implora pace.'
'Lucrezia Picini
Implora eterna quiete.'"
Can anything be more full of pathos? These few words say all that can be
said or sought; the dead had had enough of life; all they wanted was rest,
and this they implore. There is all the helplessness, and humble hope, and
death-like prayer that can arise from the grave--'implora pace.' "I hope,
whoever may survive me, and shall see me put in the foreigner's
burying-ground at the Lido, within the fortress by the Adriatic, will see
these two words, and no more, put over me. I trust they won't think of
pickling and bringing me home to Clod, or Blunderbuss Hall. I am sure my
bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of
that country." Hunt's view is, in this as in other subtle respects, nearer
the truth than Moore's; for with all Byron's insight into Italian vice, he
hated more the master vice of England--hypocrisy; and much of his
greatest, and in a sense latest, because unfinished work, is the severest,
as it might be the wholesomest, satire ever directed against a great
nation since the days of Juvenal and Tacitus.
In September (1817) Byron entered into negotiations, afterwards completed,
for renting a country house among the Euganean hills near Este, from Mr.
Hoppner, the English Consul at Venice, who bears frequent testimony to his
kindness and courtesy. In October we find him settled for the winter in
Venice, where he first occupied his old quarters, in the Spezieria, and
afterwards hired one of the palaces of the Countess Mocenigo on the Grand
Canal. Between this mansion, the cottage at Este, and the villa of La
Mira, he divided his time for the next two years. During the earlier part
of his Venetian career he had continued to frequent the salon of the
Countess Albrizzi, where he met with people of both sexes of some rank and
standing who appreciated his genius, though some among them fell into
absurd mistakes. A gentleman of the company informing the hostess, in
answer to some inquiry regarding Canova's busts, that Washington, the
American President, was shot in a duel by Burke, "What, in the name of
folly, are you thinking of?" said Byron, perceiving that the speaker was
confounding Washington with Hamilton, and Burke with Burr. He afterwards
transferred himself to the rival coterie of the Countess Benzoni, and gave
himself up with little reserve to the intrigues which cast discredit on
this portion of his life. Nothing is so conducive to dissipation as
despair, and Byron had begun to regard the Sea-Cybele as a Sea-Sodom--when
he wrote, "To watch a city die daily, as she does, is a sad contemplation.
I sought to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own
solitude, by plunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure." In
any case, he forsook the "Dame," and, by what his biographer calls a
"descent in the scale of refinement, for which nothing but the wayward
state of his mind can account," sought the companions of his leisure hours
among the wearers of the "fazzioli." The carnivals of the years 1818,
1819, mark the height of his excesses. Early in the former, Mariana Segati
fell out of favour, owing to Byron's having detected her in selling the
jewels he had given as presents, and so being led to suspect a large
mercenary element in her devotion. To her succeeded Margarita Cogni, the
wife of a baker who proved as accommodating as his predecessor, the
linen-draper. This woman was decidedly a character, and Señor Castelar has
almost elevated her into a heroine. A handsome virago, with brown
shoulders, and black hair, endowed with the strength of an Amazon, "a face
like Faustina's, and the figure of a Juno--tall and energetic as a
pythoness," she quartered herself for twelve months in the palace as
"Donna di governo," and drove the servants about without let or hindrance.
Unable to read or write she intercepted his lordship's letters to little
purpose; but she had great natural business talents, reduced by one half
the expenses of his household, kept everything in good order, and, when
her violences roused his wrath, turned it off with some ready retort or
witticism. She was very devout, and would cross herself three times at the
Angelus. One instance, of a different kind of devotion, from Byron's own
account, is sufficiently graphic:--"In the autumn one day, going to the
Lido with my gondoliers, we were overtaken by a heavy squall, and the
gondola put in peril, hats blown away, boat filling, oar lost, tumbling
sea, thunder, rain in torrents, and wind unceasing. On our return, after a
tight struggle, I found her on the open stops of the Mocenigo Palace on
the Grand Canal, with her great black eyes flashing through her tears, and
the long dark hair which was streaming, drenched with rain, over her
brows. She was perfectly exposed to the storm; and the wind blowing her
dress about her thin figure, and the lightning flashing round her, made
her look like Medea alighted from her chariot, or the Sibyl of the tempest
that was rolling around her, the only living thing within hail at that
moment, except ourselves. On seeing me safe she did not wait to greet me,
as might have been expected; but, calling out to me, 'Ah! can' della
Madonna, xe esto il tempo per andar' al' Lido,' ran into the house, and
solaced herself with scolding the boatmen for not foreseeing the
'temporale.' Her joy at seeing me again was moderately mixed with
ferocity, and gave me the idea of a tigress over her recovered cubs."
Some months after she became ungovernable--threw plates about, and
snatched caps from the heads of other women who looked at her lord in
public places. Byron told her she must go home; whereupon she proceeded to
break glass, and threaten "knives, poison, fire;" and on his calling his
boatmen to get ready the gondola, threw herself in the dark night into the
canal. She was rescued, and in a few days finally dismissed; after which
he saw her only twice, at the theatre. Her whole picture is more like that
of Théroigne de Méricourt than that of Raphael's Fornarina, whose name she
received.
Other stories, of course, gathered round this strange life--personal
encounters, aquatic feats, and all manner of romantic and impossible
episodes; their basis being, that Byron on one occasion thrashed, on
another challenged, a man who tried to cheat him, was a frequent rider,
and a constant swimmer, so that he came to be called "the English fish,"
"water-spaniel," "sea-devil," &c. One of the boatmen is reported to have
said, "He is a good gondolier, spoilt by being a poet and a lord;" and in
answer to a traveller's inquiry, "Where does he get his poetry?" "He dives
for it." His habits, as regards eating, seem to have been generally
abstemious; but he drank a pint of gin and water over his verses at night,
and then took claret and soda in the morning.
Riotous living may have helped to curtail Byron's life, but it does not
seem to have seriously impaired his powers. Among these adverse
surroundings of the "court of Circe," he threw off _Beppo_, _Mazeppa_, and
the early books of _Don Juan_. The first canto of the last was written in
November, 1818, the second in January, 1819, the third and fourth towards
the close of the same year. _Beppo_, its brilliant prelude, sparkles like
a draught of champagne. This "Venetian story," or sketch, in which the
author broke ground on his true satiric field--the satire of social
life--and first adopted the measure avowedly suggested by _Whistlecraft_
(Frere), was drafted in October, 1817, and appeared in May, 1818. It aims
at comparatively little, but is perfectly successful in its aim, and
unsurpassed for the incisiveness of its side strokes, and the courtly ease
of a manner that never degenerates into mannerism. In _Mazeppa_ the poet
reverts to his earlier style, and that of Scott; the description of the
headlong ride hurries us along with a breathless expectancy that gives it
a conspicuous place among his minor efforts. The passage about the howling
of the wolves, and the fever faint of the victim, is as graphic as
anything in Burns--
The skies spun like a mighty wheel,
I saw the trees like drunkards reel.
In the May or June of 1818 Byron's little daughter, Allegra, had been sent
from England, under the care of a Swiss nurse too young to undertake her
management in such trying circumstances, and after four months of anxiety
he placed her in charge of Mrs. Hoppner. In the course of this and the
next year there are frequent allusions to the child, all, save one which
records a mere affectation of indifference, full of affectionate
solicitude. In June, 1819, he writes, "Her temper and her ways, Mr.
Hoppner says, are like mine, as well as her features; she will make, in
that case, a manageable young lady." Later he talks of her as "flourishing
like a pomegranate blossom." In March, 1820, we have another reference.
"Allegra is prettier, I think, but as obstinate as a mule, and as ravenous
as a vulture; health good, to judge by the complexion, temper tolerable,
but for vanity and pertinacity. She thinks herself handsome, and will do
as she pleases." In May he refers to having received a letter from her
mother, but gives no details. In the following year, with the approval of
the Shelleys then at Pisa, he placed her for education in the convent of
Cavalli Bagni in the Romagna. "I have," he writes to Hoppner, who had
thought of having her boarded in Switzerland, "neither spared care,
kindness, nor expense, since the child was sent to me. The people may say
what they please. I must content myself with not deserving, in this
instance, that they should speak ill. The place is a _country_ town, in a
good air, and less liable to objections of every kind. It has always
appeared to me that the moral defect in Italy does _not_ proceed from a
_conventual_ education; because, to my certain knowledge, they come out of
their convents innocent, even to ignorance of moral evil; but to the state
of society into which they are directly plunged on coming out of it. It is
like educating an infant on a mountain top, and then taking him to the
sea, and throwing him into it, and desiring him to swim." Elsewhere he
says, "I by no means intend to give a natural child an English education,
because, with the disadvantages of her birth, her after settlement would
be doubly difficult. Abroad, with a fair foreign education, and a portion
of 5000_l_. or 6000_l_. (his will leaving her 5000_l_., on condition that
she should not marry an Englishman, is here explained and justified), she
might, and may, marry very respectably. In England such a dowry would be a
pittance, while elsewhere it is a fortune. It is, besides, my wish that
she should be a Roman Catholic, which I look upon as the best religion, as
it is assuredly the oldest of the various branches of Christianity." It
only remains to add that, when he heard that the child had fallen ill of
fever in 1822, Byron was almost speechless with agitation, and, on the
news of her death, which took place April 22nd, he seemed at first utterly
prostrated. Next day he said, "Allegra is dead; she is more fortunate than
we. It is God's will, let us mention it no more." Her remains rest beneath
the elm-tree at Harrow which her father used to haunt in boyhood, with the
date of birth and death, and the scripture--
I shall go to her, but she shall not return to me.
The most interesting of the visits paid to Byron during the period of his
life at Venice was that of Shelley, who, leaving his wife and children at
Bagni di Lucca, came to see him in August, 1818. He arrived late, in the
midst of a thunderstorm; and next day they sailed to the Lido, and rode
together along the sands. The attitude of the two poets towards each other
is curious; the comparatively shrewd man of the world often relied on the
idealist for guidance and help in practical matters, admired his courage
and independence, spoke of him invariably as the best of men, but never
paid a sufficiently warm tribute in public to his work. Shelley, on the
other hand, certainly the most modest of great poets, contemplates Byron
in the fixed attitude of a literary worshipper.
The introduction to _Julian and Maddalo_, directly suggested by this
visit, under the slight veil of a change in the name, gives a summary of
the view of his friend's character which he continued to entertain. "He is
a person of the most consummate genius, and capable if he would direct his
energies to such an end, of becoming the redeemer of his degraded country.
But it is his weakness to be proud; he derives, from a comparison of his
own extraordinary mind with the dwarfish intellects that surround him, an
intense apprehension of the nothingness of human life. His passions and
his powers are incomparably greater than those of other men; and instead
of the latter having been employed in curbing the former, they have
mutually lent each other strength;" but "in social life no human being can
be more gentle, patient, and unassuming. He is cheerful, frank, and witty.
His more serious conversation is a sort of intoxication; men are held by
it as by a spell."
Subsequently to this visit Byron lent the villa at Este to his friend, and
during the autumn weeks of their residence there were written the lines
among the Euganean hills, where, in the same strain of reverence, Shelley
refers to the "tempest-cleaving swan of Albion," to the "music flung o'er
a mighty thunder-fit," and to the sunlike soul destined to immortalize his
ocean refuge,--
As the ghost of Homer clings
Round Seamander's wasting springs,
As divinest Shakespeare's might
Fills Avon and the world with light.
"The sun," he says, at a later date, "has extinguished the glowworm;" and
again, "I despair of rivalling Lord Byron, as well I may; and there is no
other with whom it is worth contending."
Shelley was, in the main, not only an exquisite but a trustworthy critic;
and no man was more absolutely above being influenced by the fanfaronade
of rank or the din of popularity. These criticisms are therefore not to be
lightly set aside, nor are they unintelligible. Perhaps those admirers of
the clearer and more consistent nature, who exalt him to the rank of a
greater poet, are misled by the amiable love of one of the purest
characters in the history of our literature. There is at least no
difficulty in understanding why he should have been, as it were, concussed
by Byron's greater massiveness and energy into a sense--easy to an
impassioned devotee--of inferiority. Similarly, most of the estimates--
many already reversed, others reversible--by the men of that age, of each
other, can be explained. We can see how it was that Shelley overestimated
both the character and the powers of Hunt; and Byron depreciated Keats,
and was ultimately repelled by Wordsworth, and held out his hand to meet
the manly grasp of Scott. The one enigma of their criticism is the respect
that they joined in paying to the witty, genial, shallow, worldly, musical
Tom Moore.
This favourite of fortune and the minor muses, in the course of a short
tour through the north of Italy in the autumn of 1819, found his noble
friend on the 8th of October at La Mira, went with him on a sight-seeing
expedition to Venice, and passed five or six days in his company. Of this
visit he has recorded his impressions, some of which relate to his host's
personal appearance, others to his habits and leading incidents of his
life. Byron "had grown fatter, both in person and face, and the latter had
suffered most by the change, having lost by the enlargement of the
features some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other
times distinguished it, but although less romantic he appeared more
humorous." They renewed their recollections of the old days and nights in
London, and compared them with later experiences of Bores and Blues, in a
manner which threatened to put to flight the historical and poetical
associations naturally awakened by the City of the Sea. Byron had a rooted
dislike to any approach to fine talk in the ordinary intercourse of life;
and when his companion began to rhapsodize on the rosy hue of the Italian
sunsets, he interrupted him with, "Come, d--n it, Tom, _don't_ be
poetical." He insisted on Moore, who sighed after what he imagined would
be the greater comforts of an hotel, taking up his quarters in his palace;
and as they were groping their way through the somewhat dingy entrance,
cried out, "Keep clear of the dog!" and a few paces farther, "Take care,
or the monkey will fly at you!" an incident recalling the old vagaries of
the menagerie at Newstead. The biographer's reminiscences mainly dwell on
his lordship's changing moods and tempers and gymnastic exercises, his
terror of interviewing strangers, his imperfect appreciation of art, his
preference of fish to flesh, his almost parsimonious economy in small
matters, mingled with allusions to his domestic calamities, and frequent
expressions of a growing distaste to Venetian society. On leaving the
city, Moore passed a second afternoon at La Mira, had a glimpse of
Allegra, and the first intimation of the existence of the notorious
Memoirs. "A short time after dinner Byron left the room, and returned
carrying in his hand a white leather bag. 'Look here,' he said, holding it
up; 'this would be worth something to Murray, though _you_, I dare say,
would not give sixpence for it.' 'What is it?' I asked. 'My life and
adventures,' he answered. 'It is not a thing,' he answered, 'that can be
published during my lifetime, but you may have it if you like. There, do
whatever you please with it.' In taking the bag, and thanking him most
warmly, I added, 'This will make a nice legacy for my little Tom, who
shall astonish the latter days of the nineteenth century with it.'"[2]
Shortly after, Moore for the last time bade his friend farewell, taking
with him from Madame Guiccioli, who did the honours of the house, an
introduction to her brother, Count Gamba, at Rome. "Theresa Guiccioli,"
says Castelar, "appears like a star on the stormy horizon of the poet's
life." A young Romagnese, the daughter of a nobleman of Ravenna, of good
descent but limited means, she had been educated in a convent, and married
in her nineteenth year to a rich widower of sixty, in early life a friend
of Alfieri, and noted as the patron of the National Theatre. This
beautiful blonde, of pleasing manners, graceful presence, and a strong
vein of sentiment, fostered by the reading of Chateaubriand, met Byron for
the first time casually when she came in her bridal dress to one of the
Albrizzi reunions; but she was only introduced to him early in the April
of the following year, at the house of the Countess Benzoni. "Suddenly the
young Italian found herself inspired with a passion of which till that
moment her mind could not have formed the least idea; she had thought of
love but as an amusement, and now became its slave." Byron, on the other
hand, gave what remained of a heart, never alienated from her by any other
mistress. Till the middle of the month they met every day; and when the
husband took her back to Ravenna she despatched to her idol a series of
impassioned letters, declaring her resolution to mould her life in
accordance with his wishes. Towards the end of May she had prepared her
relatives to receive Byron as a visitor. He started in answer to the
summons, writing on his way the beautiful stanzas to the Po, beginning--
River that rollest by the ancient walls
Where dwells the lady of my love.
[Footnote 2: In December, 1820, Byron sent several more sheets of
memoranda from Ravenna, and in the following year suggested an
arrangement by which Murray paid over to Moore, who was then in
difficulties, 2000_l_. for the right of publishing the whole, under
the condition, among others, that Lady Byron should see them, and have
the right of reply to anything that might seem to her objectionable.
She on her part declined to have anything to do with them. When the
Memoirs were destroyed, Moore paid back the 2000_l_., but obtained
four thousand guineas for editing the _Life and Correspondence_.]
Again passing through Ferrara, and visiting Bologna, he left the latter on
the 8th, and on his arrival at his destination found the Countess
dangerously ill; but his presence, and the attentions of the famous
Venetian doctor, Aglietti, who was sent for by his advice, restored her.
The Count seems to have been proud of his guest. "I can't make him out at
all," Byron writes; "he visits me frequently, and takes me out (like
Whittington the Lord Mayor) in a coach and six horses. The fact appears to
be, that he is completely governed by her--and, for that matter, so am I."
Later he speaks of having got his horses from Venice, and riding or
driving daily in the scenery reproduced in the third canto of _Don
Juan_:--
Sweet hour of twilight! in the solitude
Of the pine forest, and the silent shore
Which bounds Ravenna's immemorial wood.
On Theresa's recovery, in dread of a possible separation he proposed to
fly with her to America, to the Alps, to "some unsuspected isle in the far
seas;" and she suggested the idea of feigning death, like Juliet, and
rising from the tomb. Neither expedient was called for. When the Count
went to Bologna, in August, with his wife, Lord Byron was allowed to
follow; and--after consoling himself during an excursion which the married
pair made to their estate, by hovering about her empty rooms and writing
in her books--he established himself, on the Count's return to his
headquarters, with her and Allegra at Bologna. Meanwhile, Byron had
written _The Prophecy of Dante_, and in August the prose letter, _To the
Editor of the British Review_, on the charge of bribery in _Don Juan_.
Than this inimitable epistle no more laughter-compelling composition
exists. About the same time, we hear of his leaving the theatre in a
convulsion of tears, occasioned by the representation of Alfieri's
_Mirra_.
He left Bologna with the Countess on the 15th of September, when they
visited the Euganean hills and Arqua, and wrote their names together in
the Pilgrim's Book. On arriving at Venice, the physicians recommending
Madame Guiccioli to country air, they settled, still by her husband's
consent, for the autumn at La Mira, where Moore and others found them
domesticated. At the beginning of November the poet was prostrated by an
attack of tertian fever. In some of his hours of delirium he dictated to
his careful nurses, Fletcher and the Countess, a number of verses, which
she assures us were correct and sensible. He attributes his restoration to
cold water and the absence of doctors; but, ere his complete recovery,
Count Guiccioli had suddenly appeared on the scene, and run away with his
own wife. The lovers had for a time not only to acquiesce in the
separation, but to agree to cease their correspondence. In December, Byron
in a fit of spleen had packed up his belongings, with a view to return to
England. "He was," we are told, "ready dressed for the journey, his boxes
on board the gondola, his gloves and cap on, and even his little cane in
his hand, when my lord declares that if it should strike one--which it
did--before everything was in order, he would not go that day. It is
evident he had not the heart to go." Next day he heard that Madame
Guiccioli was again seriously ill, received and accepted the renewed
invitation which bound him to her and to the south. He left Venice for the
last time almost by stealth, rushed along the familiar roads, and was
welcomed at Ravenna.