One February afternoon in the year 1822, about two o'clock,--for this
is the hour at which his day begins,--"the most notorious personality
of his century" arouses himself, in the Palazzo Lanfranchi at Pisa.
George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, languidly arises and dresses, with the
assistance of his devoted valet Fletcher. Invariably he awakes in very
low spirits, "in actual despair and despondency," he has termed it: this
is in part constitutional, and partly, no doubt, a reaction after the
feverish brain-work of the previous night. It is, at any rate, in
unutterable melancholy and _ennui_ that he surveys in the mirror that
slight and graceful form, which had been idolised by London drawing-rooms,
and that pale, scornful, beautiful face, "like a spirit, good or evil,"
which the enthusiastic Walter Scott has termed a thing to dream of. He
notes the grey streaks already visible among his dark brown locks, and
mutters his own lines miserably to himself,--
Through life's dull road, so dim and dirty,
I have dragg'd to three-and-thirty.
What have these years left to me?
Nothing--except thirty-three.
An innumerable motley crowd of reminiscences--most of them bitter,
sorrowful, or contemptuous, throng across his mind, shaping themselves
into poignant verse:
There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away,
When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay;
'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone, which fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone, ere youth itself be past.
* * * * *
Oh! could I feel as I have felt,--or be what I have been,
Or weep as I could once have wept o'er many a vanished scene;
As springs in desert found seem sweet, all brackish though they be,
So, 'midst the wither'd waste of life, those tears would flow to me.
A meagre breakfast,--of claret and soda with a few mouthfuls of some
Italian dish,--somewhat restores his natural vivacity: and he listens
with cynical amusement to Fletcher's blood-curdling stories of the
phantoms who have made night hideous. For the famous old feudal Palazzo,
with its dungeons and secret chambers, has been immemorially infested
with ghosts, and harassed by inexplicable noises. Fletcher has already
begged leave to change his room, and then refused to occupy his new
room, because, as his master reports, "there are more ghosts there than
in the other!... There is one place where people were evidently walled
up ... I am bothered about these spectres, as they say the last occupants
were too." However, he is laughing as he descends the magnificent
staircase,--the reputed work of Michael Angelo,--laughing until the
shrill querulous cries of peevish children make him stop and frown. He
has allowed the Leigh Hunts, with their large and fractious family, to
occupy for the present the ground-floor of the Palazzo; and children
are his pet abhorrence. "I abominate the sight of them so much," he has
already told Moore, "that I have always had the greatest respect for
the character of Herod!" No child figures in any of his poems: his own
paternal feeling towards "Ada, sole daughter of my house and home," is
merely a fluctuating sentiment.
He shrugs his shoulders and enters his great _salon_, again moody and
with a downcast air: and throws himself upon a couch in gloomy reverie.
Snatches of poetry wander through his thoughts--poetry intrinsically
autobiographical, for "the inequalities of his style are those of his
career," and his imaginary heroes are endless reproductions of himself,
"the wandering outlaw of his own dark mind." He has drawn his own
picture more effectively in _Lara_ than any strange hand could do.
In him, inexplicably mix'd, appear'd
Much to be loved and hated, sought and fear'd;
Opinion, varying o'er his hidden lot,
In praise or railing ne'er his name forgot....
There was in him a vital scorn of all:
As if the worst had fall'n which could befall;
He stood a stranger in this breathing world,
An erring spirit from another hurl'd....
His early dreams of good outstripp'd the truth,
And troubled manhood follow'd baffled youth.
His men, in short, as has been observed, are "made after his own image,
and his women after his own heart." Yet the inveterate family likeness
of these heroes is not shared by the heroines of his romantic stanzas:
for Byron has an eclectic taste in beauty. One can hardly imagine a
wider dissimilarity than between the _Bride of Abydos_, the gentle
Zuleika, with her
"Nameless charms unmark'd by her alone--
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonised the whole,
And oh! that eye was in itself a Soul."
and "Circassia's daughter," the stately Leila of _The Giaour_, whose
black and flowing hair "swept the marble where her feet gleamed whiter
than the mountain sleet." Or, if the reader seek a further choice, there
is Medora, beloved of the Corsair,--Medora of the deep blue eye and long
fair hair; or the nameless Eastern maiden of the _Hebrew Melodies_:
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that's best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellow'd to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impair'd the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o'er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
And on that cheek, and o'er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
Yet all these heroines are alike in one respect--their potentiality of
passionate emotion: since Byron's "passions and his powers," according
to his intense admirer Shelley, "are incomparably greater than those of
other men:" and he has used the last almost recklessly in portrayal of
the first.
As the poet reclines in sombre meditation, his reverie is broken by
the not unwelcome entrance of his friends--who may be better termed
his intimate acquaintances. For, to that brooding, introspective
spirit,--constitutionally shy, and morbidly conscious of the
fact,--"friendship is a propensity," he has declared, "to which my
genius is very limited. I do not know the _male_ human being, except
Lord Clare, the friend of my infancy, for whom I feel anything that
deserves the name. All my others are men-of-the-world friendships."
Be that as it may, it is with a warmly cordial expression, and with
that peculiarly sweet smile of his, that Byron welcomes his usual
visitors,--Captain Williams, Captain Medwin, Taafe the Irishman, and
Percy Bysshe Shelley, "the most companionable person under thirty,"
he has avowed, "that ever I knew." When they have discussed the latest
little Pisan _on dits_, and the progress of Shelley's boat-building,
the conversation trends more and more towards literary topics: personal
topics, be it understood, for Byron is not an omnivorous reader like
Shelley. Williams and Medwin, themselves dabblers in verse and prose,
listen with respectful admiration to the _dicta_ of the great poets
exchanging views. The low, clear, harmonious voice of Byron "is a sort
of intoxication: men are held by it as under a spell." He makes no
secret of his open contempt for the professional writing fraternity.
"Who would write, if he had anything better to do?" he scornfully
enquires, "I think the mighty stir made about scribbling and scribes, by
themselves and others, a sign of effeminacy, degeneracy, and weakness."
Shelley, whose assiduous studies in literature have led him to quite
other conclusions, defends his craft with ardour. But Byron's chief
successes have been too lightly won. He who wrote the _Corsair_ in ten
days, the _Bride of Abydos_ in four, and _Lara_ whilst undressing after
balls and masquerades, cannot be expected to take a very serious view of
poetry as the one business of a lifetime. "I by no means rank poetry or
poets," says he, "high in the scale of imagination. Poetry is the lava
of the imagination, whose eruption prevents an earthquake. If I live ten
years longer," he adds prophetically, "you will see that all is not over
with me,--I don't mean in literature, for that is nothing, and, it may
seem odd enough to say, I don't think it's my vocation. But you will see
that I shall do _something_ or other!"
[Illustration]