PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON.
The following letter was addressed to M. de Lamartine, who had asked the
author of these pages to give him the "portrait physique" of Lord Byron.
MY DEAR MONSIEUR DE LAMARTINE,--
Being on the point of departure, I nevertheless wish to send you a few
explanations which must serve as my apology. You have asked me to draw
the portrait of Lord Byron, and I have promised you that I would do so.
I now see that my promise was presumptuous. Every time I have endeavored
to trace it, I have had to put down my pen, discouraged as I was by the
fact of my always discovering too many obstacles between my
reminiscences and the possibility of expressing them. My attempts
appeared to me at times to be a profanation by the smallness of their
character; at others, they bore the mark of an extreme enthusiasm,
which, however, seemed to me very weak in its results and very
ridiculous in its want of power. Images which are preserved in thought
to a degree which may almost be considered supernatural, are susceptible
of too much change during the short transit of the mind to the pen.
The Almighty has created beings of such harmonious and ideal beauty that
they defy description or analysis. Such a one was Lord Byron. His
wonderful beauty of expression has never been rendered either by the
brush of the painter or the sculptor's chisel. It summed up in one
magnificent type the highest expression of every possible kind of
beauty. If his genius and his great heart could have chosen a human form
by which they could have been well represented, they could not have
chosen another! Genius shone in his very looks. All the effects and
emotions of a great soul were therein reflected as well as those of an
eminently good and generous heart, and indeed contrasts were visible
which are scarcely ever united in one and the same person. His eyes
seized and betrayed the sentiments which animated him, with a rapidity
and transparency such as called forth from Sir Walter Scott the remark,
that the fine head of his young rival "was like unto a beautiful
alabaster vase lightened up by an interior lamp." To see him, was to
understand thoroughly how really false were the calumnies spread about
as to his character. The mass, by their obstinacy in identifying him
with the imaginary types of his poems, and in judging him by a few
eccentricities of early youth, as well as by various bold thoughts and
expressions, had represented to themselves a factitious Byron, totally
at variance with the real man. Calumnies, which unfortunately he passed
over in disdainful silence, have circulated as acknowledged facts. Time
has destroyed many, but it would not be correct to say that they have
all entirely been destroyed. Lord Byron was silent, because he depended
upon time to silence his calumniators. All those who saw him must have
experienced the charm which surrounded him as a kind of sympathetic
atmosphere, gaining all hearts to him. What can be said to those who
never saw him? Tell them to look at the pictures of him which were
painted by Saunders, by Phillips, by Holmes, or by Westall? All these,
although the works of great artists, are full of faults. Saunders's
picture represents him with thick lips, whereas his lips were
harmoniously perfect: Holmes almost gives him a large instead of his
well-proportioned and elegant head! In Phillips's picture the expression
is one of haughtiness and affected dignity, never once visible to those
who ever saw him.[7]
"These portraits," says Dallas, "will certainly present to the stranger
and to posterity that which it is possible for the brush to reproduce
so far as the features are concerned, but the charm of speech and the
grace of movement must be left to the imagination of those who have had
no opportunity to observe them. No brush can paint these."
The picture of Byron by Westall is superior to the others, but does not
come up to the original. As for the copies and engravings which have
been taken from these pictures, and circulated, they are all
exaggerated, and deserve the appellation of caricatures.
Can his portrait be found in the descriptions given by his biographers?
But biographers seek far more to amuse and astonish, in order that their
writings may be read, than to adhere to the simple truth.
It can not be denied, however, that in the portraits which several, such
as Moore, Dallas, Sir Walter Scott, Disraeli in London, the Countess
Albrizzi at Venice, Beyle (Stendhal) at Milan, Lady Blessington and Mrs.
Shelley in Italy, have drawn of Lord Byron there is much truth,
accompanied by certain qualifications which it is well to explain. I
shall therefore give in their own words (preferring them to my own
impressions) the unanimous testimony of those who saw him, be they
friends or beings for whom he was indifferent. Here are Moore's
words:--"Of his face, the beauty may be pronounced to have been of the
highest order, as combining at once regularity of features with the most
varied and interesting expression.
"His eyes, though of a light gray, were capable of all extremes of
expression, from the most joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness, from
the very sunshine of benevolence to the most concentrated scorn or rage.
But it was in the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as
expression of his fine countenance lay.
"His head was remarkably small, so much so as to be rather out of
proportion with his face. The forehead, though a little too narrow, was
high, and appeared more so from his having his hair (to preserve it, as
he said) shaved over the temples. Still the glossy dark-brown curls,
clustering over his head, gave the finish to its beauty. When to this is
added that his nose, though handsomely was rather thickly shaped, that
his teeth were white and regular, and his complexion colorless, as good
an idea perhaps as it is in the power of mere words to convey may be
conceived of his features.
"In height he was, as he himself has informed us, five feet eight inches
and a half, and to the length of his limbs he attributed his being such
a good swimmer. His hands were very white, and, according to his own
notions of the size of hands as indicating birth, aristocratically
small."
"What I chiefly remember to have remarked," adds Moore, "when I was
first introduced to him, was the gentleness of his voice and manners,
the nobleness of his air, his beauty, and his marked kindness to myself.
Being in mourning for his mother, the color as well of his dress, as of
his glossy, curling and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure,
spiritual paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he
spoke, there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy
was their habitual character when in repose."
When Moore saw him again at Venice, some eight years after the first
impressions which Byron's beauty had produced upon him in London (1812),
he noted a change in the character of that beauty.
"He had grown fatter both in person and face, and the latter had most
suffered 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.... He was still, however, eminently handsome, and in
exchange for whatever his features might have lost of their high
romantic character, they had become more fitted for the expression of
that arch, waggish wisdom, that epicurean play of humor, which he had
shown to be equally inherent in his various and prodigally gifted
nature; while by the somewhat increased roundness of the contours the
resemblance of his finely-formed mouth and chin to those of the
Belvedere Apollo had become still more striking."[8]
Here are now the words of Lady B----, who saw him a few weeks only
before his last departure for Greece. This lady had conceived a totally
different idea of Byron. According to her, Byron would have appeared
affected, _triste_, in accordance with certain portraits and certain
types in his poems. But, if in order not to cause any jealousy among
the living, she dared not reveal all her admiration, she at least
suffered it to appear from time to time.
"There are moments," she says, "when Lord Byron's face is shadowed over
with the pale cast of thought, and then his head might serve as a model
for a sculptor or a painter to represent the ideal of poesy. His head is
particularly well formed: his forehead is high, and powerfully
indicative of his intellect: his eyes are full of expression: his nose
is beautiful in profile, though a little thickly shaped. His eyebrows
are perfectly drawn, but his mouth is perfection. Many pictures have
been painted of him, but the excessive beauty of his lips escaped every
painter and sculptor. In their ceaseless play they represented every
motion, whether pale with anger, curled in disdain, smiling in triumph,
or dimpled with archness and love."
This portrait can not be suspected of partiality; for, whether justly or
not, she did not enjoy Lord Byron's sympathy, and knew it; she had also
to forgive him various little circumstances which had wounded her "amour
propre," and was obliged to measure her praise in order not to create
any jealousy with certain people who surrounded him and who had some
pretension to beauty.
Here is the portrait of him which another lady (the Comtesse Albrizzi of
Venice) has drawn, notwithstanding her wounded pride at the refusal of
Lord Byron to allow her to write a portrait of him and to continue her
visits to him at Venice:--
"What serenity on his forehead! What beautiful auburn, silken,
brilliant, and naturally curled hair! What variety of expression in his
sky-blue eyes! His teeth were like pearls, his cheeks had the delicate
tint of a pale rose; his neck, which was always bare, was of the purest
white. His hands were real works of art. His whole frame was faultless,
and many found rather a particular grace of manner than a fault in the
slight undulation of his person on entering a room. This bending of the
body was, however, so slight that the cause of it was hardly ever
inquired into."
As I have mentioned the deformity of his foot, even before quoting other
testimonies to his beauty, I shall tarry a while and speak of this
defect, the only one in so pre-eminently favored a being. What was this
defect, since all becomes illustrious in an illustrious man? Was it
visible? Was it true that Lord Byron felt this imperfection so keenly?
Here is the truth.
No defect existed in the formation of his limbs; his slight infirmity
was nothing but the result of weakness of one of his ankles.
His habit of ever being on horseback had brought on the emaciation of
his legs, as evinced by the post-mortem examination; besides which, the
best proof of this has been lately given in an English newspaper much to
the following effect:--
"Mrs. Wildman (the widow of the colonel who had bought Newstead) has
lately given to the Naturalist Society of Nottingham several objects
which had belonged to Lord Byron, and among others his boot and shoe
trees. These trees are about nine inches long, narrow, and generally of
a symmetrical form. They were accompanied by the following statement of
Mr. Swift, bootmaker, who worked for his lordship from 1805 to 1807.
Swift is still alive, and continues to reside at Southwell. His
testimony as to the genuineness of the trees, and to the nature of Lord
Byron's deformity, of which so many contradictory assertions have
circulated, is as follows:--
"'William Swift, bootmaker at Southwell, Nottinghamshire, having had the
honor of working for Lord Byron when residing at Southwell from 1805 to
1807, asserts that these were the trees upon which his lordship's boots
and shoes were made, and that the last pair delivered was on the 10th of
May, 1807. He, moreover, affirms that his lordship had not a club foot,
as has been said, but that both his feet were equally well formed, one,
however, being an inch and a half shorter than the other. The defect was
not in the foot but in the ankle, which, being weak, caused the foot to
turn out too much. To remedy this his lordship wore a very light and
thin boot, which was tightly laced just under the sole, and, when a boy
he was made to wear a piece of iron with a joint at the ankle, which
passed behind the leg and was tied behind the shoe. The calf of this leg
was weaker than the other, and it was the left leg.
(Signed) WILLIAM SWIFT.'"
This, then, is the extent of the defect of which so much has been said,
and which has been called a deformity. As to its being visible, all
those who knew him assert that it was so little evident that it was even
impossible to discover in which of the legs or feet the fault existed.
To the testimonies already quoted I must add another:--
"His defect," says Mr. Galt, "was scarcely visible. He had a way of
walking which made it appear almost imperceptible, and indeed entirely
so. I spent several days on board a ship with him without discovering
this defect; and, in truth, so little perceptible was it that a doubt
always existed in my mind whether it might not be the effect of a
temporary accident rather than a natural defect."
All those who knew him being therefore agreed in this opinion, that of
people who were not acquainted with him is of no value. But if, in the
material appreciation of a defect, they have not been able to err,
several have erred in their moral appreciation of the fact by pretending
that Lord Byron, for imaginary reasons, was exceedingly sensible of this
defect. This excessive sensibility was a pure invention on the part of
his biographers. When he did experience it (which was never but to a
very moderate extent), it was only because, physically speaking, he
suffered from it. Under the sole of the weak foot he at times
experienced a painful sensation, especially after long walks.
"Once, at Genoa," says Mme. G., "he walked down the hill of Albaro to
the seaside with me, by a rugged and rough path. When we had reached the
shore he was very well and lively. But it was an exceedingly hot day,
and the return home fatigued him greatly. When home I told him I thought
he looked ill. 'Yes,' said he,' I suffer greatly from my foot; it can
hardly be conceived how much I suffer at times from that pain,' and he
continued to speak to me about this defect with great simplicity and
indifference."
He used often even to laugh at it, so superior was he to that weakness.
"Beware," said Count Gamba to him on one occasion while riding with him,
and on reaching some dangerous spot, "beware of falling and breaking
your neck." "I should decidedly not like it," said Byron; "but if this
leg of which I don't make much use were to break, it would be the same
to me, and perhaps then I should be able to procure myself a more useful
one."
The sensitiveness, therefore, which he was said to experience, and which
would have been childish in him, was in reality only the occasional
experience of a physical pain which did not, however, affect his
strength, nor the grace of his movements, in all those physical
exercises to which he was so much attached. It in no wise altered his
good looks, and, as a proof of this, I shall again bring testimonies,
giving first that of M.N., who was at Constantinople when Byron arrived
there for the first time, and who thus describes him in a review which
he wrote of him after Byron's death:--
"A stranger then entered the bazar. He wore a scarlet cloak, richly
embroidered with gold in the style of an English aid-de-camp's dress
uniform. He was attended by a janissary attached to the English Embassy
and by a cicerone: he appeared to be about twenty-two. His features were
of so exquisite a delicacy, that one might almost have given him a
feminine appearance, but for the manly expression of his fine blue eyes.
On entering the inner shop he took off his hat, and showed a head of
curly auburn hair, which improved in no small degree the uncommon beauty
of his face. The impression his whole appearance made upon my mind, was
such that it has ever remained most deeply engraven on it; and although
fifteen years have since gone by, the lapse of time has not in the least
impaired the freshness of the recollection." Then, speaking of his
manner, he goes on to say: "There was so irresistible an attraction in
his manner, that only those who have been so fortunate as to be admitted
to his intimacy can have felt its power."
Moore once asked Lady Holland whether she believed that Lady Byron had
ever really loved Lord Byron. "Could it be otherwise?" replied Lady
Holland. "Was it possible not to love so lovable a creature? I see him
there now, surrounded as it were by that great light: oh, how handsome
he was!"
One of the most difficult things to define was the color of his eyes. It
was a mixture of blue, gray, and violet, and these various colors were
each uppermost according to the thought which occupied his mind or his
heart. "Tell me, dear," said the little Eliza to her sister, whose
enthusiasm for Byron she shared, "tell me what is the color of his
eyes?" "I can not say; I believe them to be dark," answered Miss Eliza,
"but all I know is that they have quite a supernatural splendor." And
one day, having looked at them with greater attention in order to
ascertain their color, she said, "They are the finest eyes in the world,
but not dark, as I had at first believed. Their hue is that of the eyes
of Mary Stuart, and his long, black eye-lashes make them appear dark.
Never did I before, nor ever again shall I, see such eyes! As for his
hands, they are the most beautiful hands, for a man, I ever saw. His
voice is a sweet melody."[9]
Sir Walter Scott was enchanted when he could dilate on the extraordinary
beauty of Byron. One day, at Mr. Home Drummond's, he exclaimed:--"As for
poets, I have seen the best that this country has produced, and although
Burns had the finest eyes that can be imagined, I never thought that any
man except Byron could give an artist the exact idea of a poet. His
portraits do not do him the least justice; the varnish is there, but the
ray of sunshine is wanting to light them up. The beauty of Byron," he
added "is one which makes one dream."
Colonel Wildman, his colleague at Harrow, and his friend, was always
wont to say, "Lord Byron is the only man among all those I have seen,
who may be called, without restriction, a really handsome man."
Disraeli, in his novel entitled "Venetia," speaks thus of the beauty of
Hubert (who is Lord Byron) when Venetia finds his portrait:--
"That being of supernatural beauty is her father. Young as he was,
command and genius, the pride of noble passions, all the glory of a
creative mind, seemed stamped upon his brow. With all his marvellous
beauty he seemed a being born for greatness.... Its reality exceeded the
wildest dreams of her romance, her brightest visions of grace and
loveliness and genius seemed personified in this form. He was a man in
the very spring of sunny youth and of radiant beauty. He was above the
middle height, yet with a form that displayed exquisite grace.... It
was a countenance of singular loveliness and power. The lips and the
moulding of the chin resembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of
the shape of Antinous; but instead of the effeminate sullenness of the
eye and the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an expression of
profound and piercing thought. On each side of the clear and open brow
descended, even to the shoulders, the clustering locks of golden hair;
while the eyes large and yet deep, beamed with a spiritual energy, and
shone like two wells of crystalline water that reflect the all-beholding
heavens."
M. Beyle (Stendhal) writes to Mr. Swanton Belloc:--"It was in the autumn
of the year 1816 that I met Lord Byron at the theatre of the Scala, at
Milan, in the box of the Bremen Minister. I was struck with Lord Byron's
eyes at the time when he was listening to a sestetto in Mayer's opera of
"Elena." I never in my life saw any thing more beautiful or more
expressive. Even now, when I think of the expression which a great
painter should give to genius, I always have before me that magnificent
head. I had a moment of enthusiasm." And further, he adds that one day
he saw him listening to Monti while the latter was singing his first
couplet in the "Mascheroniana." "I shall never forget," said he, "the
divine expression of his look; it was the serene look of genius and
power."
I might multiply these testimonies of people who have seen him, and fill
many pages; their particular character is their uniform resemblance.
This proves the soundness of the ground on which their truth is based. I
will add one more testimony to the others, that of Mrs. Shelley, which
is even nearer the truth, and condenses all the others:--"Lord Byron,"
said this distinguished woman, "was the first genius of his age and the
handsomest of men."
In all these portraits there is much truth, but they are not
sufficiently complete to give those who never saw him any but a faint
idea of his smile, or of his mouth, which seemed to be not suited to
material purposes, and to be purely intellectual and divine; of his
eyes, which changed from one color to another according to the various
emotions of his soul, but the habitual expression of which was that of
an infinite and intense softness; of his sublime and noble brow; of his
melodious voice, which attracted and captivated; and of that kind of
supernatural light which seemed to surround him like a halo.
This inability on the part of artists and biographers to render exactly
Byron's features and looks, is not to be wondered at, for although
perfectly regular, his features derived their principal beauty from the
life which his soul instilled into them. The emotions of his heart, the
changes of his thoughts, appeared so variously upon his countenance, and
gave the latter so changeable a cast, that it sufficed not for the
artist who had to portray him, to gaze at and study him, as one
generally does less gifted or elevated organizations. The reality was
more likely to be well interpreted when it stood a prey to the various
emotions of the soul; in his leisure hours, in the full enjoyment of
life and love, he was satisfied with the knowledge that he was young,
handsome, beloved, and admired. Then it was that his beauty became, as
it were, radiant and brilliant like a ray of sunshine.
The time to see him was when, under the influence of genius, his soul
was tormented with the desire of pouring out the numberless ideas and
thoughts which flooded his mind: at such moments one scarcely dared
approach him, awed, as it were, by the feeling of one's own nothingness
in comparison with his greatness. Again, the time to see him was when,
coming down from the high regions to which a moment before he had
soared, he became once more the simple child adorned with goodness and
every grace; taking an interest in all things, as if he were really a
child. It was impossible then to refrain from the contemplation of this
placid beauty, which, without taking away in the least from the
admiration which it inspired, drew one toward him, and made him more
accessible to one, and more familiar by lessening a little the distance
which separated one from him. But, above all, he should have been seen
during the last days of his stay in Italy, when his soul had to sustain
the most cruel blows; when heroism got the better of his affections, of
his worldly interests, and even of his love of ease and tranquillity;
when his health, already shaken, appeared to fail him each day more and
more, to the loss of his intellectual powers. Had one seen him then as
we saw him, it would scarcely have been possible to paint him as he
looked. Does not genius require genius to be its interpreter?
Thorwaldsen alone has, in his marble bust of him, been able to blend the
regular beauty of his features with the sublime expression of his
countenance. Had the reader seen him, he would have exclaimed with Sir
Walter Scott, "that no picture is like him."
Not only would he have observed in his handsome face the denial of all
the absurd statements which had been made about him, but he would have
noticed a soul greater even than the mind, and superior to the acts
which he performed on this earth; he would have read in unmistakable
characters, not only what he was,--a good man,--but the promise of a
moral and intellectual perfection ever increasing. If this progressive
march toward perfection was at one time arrested by the trials of his
life, and by the consequences of undeserved sorrow, it was well proved
by his whole conduct toward the end of his life, and in the last poems
which he wrote. His poems from year to year assumed a more perfect
beauty, and increased constantly, not only in the splendor of their
conception, but also in the force of their expressions, and their moral
tendency, visible especially in his dramas. In them will be found types
surpassing in purity, in delicacy, in grandeur, in heroism, without ever
being untrue to nature, all that ever was conceived by the best poets of
England. Shakspeare, in all his master creations, has not conceived a
more noble soul than that of Angiolina, or a more tender one than
Marina's or even one more heroic than Myrrha's. As his genius became
developed, his soul became purified and more perfect. But the Almighty,
who does not allow perfection to be of this world, did not permit him to
remain on earth, when once he had reached that point. He allowed him,
however,--and this perhaps as a compensation for all the injuries which
he had suffered,--to die in the prime of life a death worthy of him; the
death of a virtuous man, of a hero, of a philosopher.
Excuse this long letter, for if I have ventured to speak to you at such
length of the moral, and--may I say the word?--"physical" beauty of the
illustrious Englishman, it is because one genius can appreciate another,
and that, in speaking of so great a man as Lord Byron, there is no fear
of tiring the listeners.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Among the bad portraits of Lord Byron spread over the
world, there is one that surpasses all others in ugliness, which is
often put up for sale, and which a mercantile spirit wishes to pass off
for a good likeness; it was done by an American, Mr. West,--an excellent
man, but a very bad painter. This portrait, which America requested to
have taken, and which Lord Byron consented to sit for, was begun at
Montenero, near Leghorn; but Lord Byron, being obliged to leave
Montenero suddenly, could only give Mr. West two or three sittings. It
was then finished from memory, and far from being at all like Lord
Byron, is a frightful caricature, which his family or friends ought to
destroy.]
[Footnote 8: Moore. vol. ii. p. 248.]
[Footnote 9: Miss E. Smith.]