QUALITIES AND VIRTUES OF SOUL.
ANTIMATERIALISM.
Among Lord Byron's natural qualities we may rank his antipathy, not only
for any thing like low sensuality or gross vice, but even for those
follies to which youth and human nature are so prone. Whatever may have
been said on this head, and notwithstanding the countenance Lord Byron's
own words may have lent to calumnies too widely believed, it will be
easy to prove the truth of our assertion. Let us examine his actions,
his words (when serious), the testimony of those who knew him through
life, and it will soon appear that this natural antipathy with him often
attained to the height of rare virtue.
Lord Byron had a passionate nature, a feeling heart, a powerful
imagination; and it can not be denied that, after the disappointment he
experienced in his ethereal love entertained at fifteen, he fell into
the usual round of university life. But as he possessed great refinement
of mind, never losing sight of an ideal of moral beauty, such an
existence speedily became odious to him. His companions thought it all
quite natural and pleasant; but he disapproved of it and blamed himself,
feeling ashamed in his own conscience.
It is well known that Lord Byron never spared himself. He invented
faults rather than sought to extenuate them. And so he fully merits
belief, when he happens to do himself justice. Let us attend to the
following:--
"I passed my degrees in vice," he says, "very quickly, _but they were
not after my taste_. For my juvenile passions, though most violent, were
concentrated, and did not willingly tend to divide and expand on several
objects. I could have renounced every thing in the world with those I
loved, or lost it all for them; but fiery though my nature was, _I
could not share without disgust in the dissipation common to the place,
and time._"
This makes Moore say, that even at the period to which we are alluding,
his irregularities were much less sensual, much less gross and varied
than those of his companions.
Nevertheless it was his boyish university life that caused Lord Byron to
be suspected of drawing his own likeness, when two years later, after
his return from the East, he brought out "Childe Harold"--an imaginary
hero, whom he imprudently surrounded with real circumstances personal to
himself.
Moore, with his usual good sense, protests strongly against such
injustice, saying that, however dissipated his college and university
life might have been during the two or three years previous to his first
travels, no foundation exists, except in the imagination of the poet,
and the credulity or malice of the world, for such disgraceful scenes as
were represented to have taken place at Newstead, by way of inferences
drawn from "Childe Harold." "In this poem," adds Moore, "he describes
the habitation of his hero as a monastic dwelling----
'Condemn'd to uses vile!
Where Superstition once had made her den
Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile.'"
These exaggerated, if not imaginary descriptions, were, nevertheless,
taken for serious, and literally believed by the greater part of his
readers.
Moore continues: "Mr. Dallas, giving way to the same exaggerated tone,
says, in speaking of the preparations for departure made by the young
lord, 'He was already satiated with pleasure, and disgusted with those
comrades who possessed no other resource, so he resolved to overcome his
senses, and accordingly dismissed his harem.' The truth is, that Lord
Byron did not then even possess sufficient fortune to allow himself this
Oriental luxury; his manner of living at Newstead was plain and simple.
His companions, without being insensible to the pleasures afforded by
liberal hospitality, were all too intellectual in their tastes and
habits to give themselves up to vulgar debauchery. As to the allusions
regarding his _harem_, it appears certain that one or two women were
suspected _subintroductae_--to use the style of the old monks of the
Abbey--but that even these belonged to the servants of the house. This
is the utmost that scandal could allege as the groundwork for suspicion
and accusation."
These assertions of Moore have been corroborated by many other
testimonies. I will only relate that mentioned by Washington Irving, in
the account of his visit to Newstead Abbey in 1830. Urged by
philosophical curiosity, Washington Irving managed to get into
conversation with a certain Nanny Smith, who had passed all her life at
Newstead as house-keeper. This old woman, after having chattered a great
deal about Lord Byron and the ghosts that haunted the Abbey, asserting
that though she had not seen them, she had heard them quite well, was
particularly questioned by Mr. Irving as to the mode of life her young
master led. She certified to his sobriety, and positively denied that he
had led a licentious life at Newstead with his friends, or brought
mistresses with him from London.
"Once, it is true," said the old lady, "he had a pretty _youth_ for a
_page_ with him. The maids declared it was a young woman. But as for me,
I never could verify the fact, and all these servant-girls were jealous,
especially one of them called Lucy. For Lord Byron being kind to her,
and a fortune-teller having predicted a high destiny for her, the poor
little thing dreamed of nothing else but becoming a great lady, and
perhaps of rising to be mistress of the Abbey. Ah, well! but her dreams
came to nothing."[42]
"Lord Byron," added the old lady, "passed the greater part of his time
seated on his sofa reading. Sometimes he had young noblemen of his
acquaintance with him. Then, it is true, they amused themselves in
playing all sorts of tricks--youthful frolics, that was all; they did
nothing improper for young gentlemen, nothing that could harm any
body."[43]
"Lord Byron's only amusements at Newstead," says Mr. Irving, "were
boating, boxing, fencing, and his dogs."
"His constant occupation was to write, and for that he had the habit of
sitting up till two and three in the morning. Thus his life at Newstead
was quite one of seclusion, entirely devoted to poetry."
After having passed a year in this way at Newstead, following on his
college and university life, he left England in order to mature his mind
under other skies, to forget the injustice of man and the hardships of
fortune that had already somewhat tinged his nature with gloom.
Instead of going in quest of emotions, his desire was, on the contrary,
to avoid both those of the heart and of the senses. The admiration felt
by the young traveller for charming Spanish women and beautiful Greeks
did not outstep the limits of the purest poetry. Nevertheless the
stoicism of twenty, with a heart, sensibility and imagination like his,
could not be very firm, nor always secure from danger. He did actually
meet with a formidable enemy at Malta; for he there made acquaintance
with Mrs. Spencer Smith, the daughter of one ambassador and the wife of
another, a woman most fascinating from her youth, beauty, mind, and
character, as well as by her singular position and strange adventures.
Did he avoid her so much as the stanzas addressed to the lovely
Florence, in the first canto of "Childe Harold," would fain imply? This
may be doubted, on account of the ring which they exchanged, and also
from several charming pieces of verse that testify to another sentiment.
In any case, he showed strength of mind, and that his senses were under
the dominion of reason; for, unable to secure her happiness or his own,
he sought a remedy in flight.
When writing "Childe Harold," however, about this period, an evil genius
suggested expressions, that if taken seriously and in their literal
sense, might some day furnish the weapons of accusation to his enemies.
For, while acting thus toward Florence, he introduced the episode into
"Childe Harold" in a way that looks calumnious against himself:----
"Little knew she that seeming marble heart,
Now mask'd in silence or withheld by pride,
Was not unskillful in the spoiler's art,
And spreads its snares licentious far and wide;
Nor from the base pursuit had turn'd aside,
As long as aught was worthy to pursue."
"We have here," says Moore, "another instance of his propensity to
self-misrepresentation. However great might have been the irregularities
of his college life, such phrases as the 'art of the spoiler' and
'spreading snares' were in no-wise applicable to them."[44]
Galt expresses the same certainty on this head. "Notwithstanding," says
he, "the unnecessary exposure he makes of his dissipation on his first
entrance into society (in the first two cantos of 'Childe Harold'), it
is proved beyond _all dispute_, that at no period of his existence did
Lord Byron _lead an irregular life_. That on one or two occasions he
fell into some excesses, may be true; _but his habits were never those
of a libertine_."[45]
And after saying that the declaration by which Byron himself
acknowledges his antipathy to vice carries more weight than all the
rest, and that what he says of it is vague and metaphysical, he
adds:--"But that only further corroborates my impression concerning
him,--that is to say, that he took a sort of vanity in setting forth his
experience in dissipation, but _that this dissipation never became a
habit with him_."
His true sentiments at this time are well portrayed in his letters, and
especially in those addressed to his mother from Athens, when she
consulted him on the conduct to be observed toward one of his tenants, a
young farmer, who had behaved ill to a girl. "My opinion is," answered
he, "that Mr. B---- ought to marry Miss K----. _Our first duty is not to
do evil_ (but, alas! that is not possible); our second duty _is to
remedy it, if that be in our power_. The girl is his equal. If she were
inferior to him, a sum of money and an allowance for the child might be
something,--although, after all, a miserable compensation; but, under
the circumstances, he ought to marry her. I will not have _gay seducers_
on my estate, nor grant my farmers a privilege _I would not take myself
of seducing other people's daughters_. I expect, then, this Lothario to
follow my example, and begin by restoring the girl to society, or, by my
father's beard, he shall hear of me."
To this letter Moore justly adds:--"The reader must not pass lightly
over this letter, for there is a _vigor of moral sentiment_ in it,
expressed in such a plain, sincere manner, that it shows how full of
health his heart was at bottom, even though it might have been scorched
by passion."
Lord Byron returned to his own country, after having spent two years
travelling in Spain, Portugal, and the East, in the study and
contemplation requisite for maturing his genius.
His distaste for all material objects of love or passion, and, in
general, for sensual pleasures, was then remarked by all those who knew
him intimately.
"An anchorite," says Moore, "who knew Lord Byron about this time, could
not have desired for himself greater _indifference toward all the
attractions of the senses_, than Lord Byron showed at the age of
twenty-three."
And as on arriving in London he met with a complication of sorrows, he
could, without any great effort, remain on his guard against all
seductions. He did so in reality; and Dallas assures us that, even when
"Childe Harold" appeared, he still professed positive distaste for the
society of women. Whether this disposition arose from regret at the
death of one he had loved, or was caused by the light conduct of other
women, it is certain that he did not seek their society then; nay, even
avoided them.
"I have a favor to ask you," he wrote, during this sad time, to one of
his young friends: "never speak to me in your letters of a woman; make
no allusion to the sex. I do not even wish to read a word about the
feminine gender."
And to this same friend he wrote in verse:----
"If thou would'st hold
Place in a heart that ne'er was cold,
By all the powers that men revere,
By all unto thy bosom dear,
Thy joys below, thy hopes above,
Speak--speak of any thing but love."
_Newstead Abbey, October 11, 1811._
But if he did not seek after women, they came in quest of him. When he
had achieved celebrity--when fame lit up his noble brow--the sex was
dazzled. They did not wait to be sought, but themselves made the first
advances. His table was literally strewn with expressions of feminine
admiration.
Dallas relates that one day he found Lord Byron so absorbed in answering
a letter that he seemed almost to have lost the consciousness of what
was passing around him.
"I went to see him again next day," says he, "and Lord Byron named the
person to whom he had written.
"While we were together, the page of the lady in question brought him a
fresh letter. Apparently it was a young boy of thirteen or fourteen
years of age, with a fresh, delicate face, that might have belonged to
the _lady herself_. He was dressed in a hussar jacket, and trowsers of
scarlet, with silver buttons and embroidery; curls of fair hair
clustered over part of the forehead and cheeks, and he held in his hand
a little cap with feathers, which completed the theatrical appearance of
this childish Pandarus. I could not help suspecting it was a disguise."
The suspicions were well founded, and they caused Dallas's hair to stand
on end, for, added to his Puritanism, was the hope of becoming the young
nobleman's Mentor, and he fancied he saw him already on the road to
perdition. But was it likely that Lord Byron, with all his imagination,
sensibility, and warm heart, should remain unmoved--neither touched nor
flattered by the advances of persons uniting beauty and wit to the
highest rank? The world talked, commented, exaggerated. Whether actuated
by jealousy, rancor, noble or despicable sentiments, all took advantage
of the occasion afforded for censure.
Feminine overtures still continued to be made to Lord Byron, but the
fumes of incense never hid from him the sight of his ideal. And as the
comparison was not favorable to realities, disenchantment took place on
his side, without a corresponding result on the other. THENCE many
heart-breakings. Nevertheless there was no ill-nature, no indelicacy,
none of those proceedings that the world readily forgives, but which his
feelings as a man of honor would have condemned. Calantha, in despair at
being no longer loved, resolved on vengeance. She invented a tale, but
what does she say when the truth escapes her?
"If in his manners he (Glenarvon) had shown any of that freedom or
wounding familiarity so frequent with men, she might, perhaps, have been
alarmed, affrighted. But what was it she would have fled from?
Certainly not gross adulation, nor those light, easy protestations to
which all women, sooner or later, are accustomed; but, on the contrary,
respect at once delicate and flattering; attention that sought to
gratify her smallest desires; grace and gentleness that, not descending
to be humble, were most fascinating, and such as are rarely to be met
with," etc.
Let us now reverse the picture, and pass from shade to light: the
difference is striking.
Passing in review his former life, Lord Byron said one day to Mr.
Medwin:--"You may not compare me to Scipio, but I can assure you that _I
never seduced any woman_."
No, certainly he did not pretend to rival Scipio; his fault was, on the
contrary, that he took pleasure in appearing the reverse. And yet Lord
Byron often performed actions during his short life that Scipio himself
might have envied. And who knows whether in any case Scipio could have
had the same merit?--for, in order to attain that, he would have
required to overcome such sensibility, imagination, and heart, as were
possessed by Lord Byron.
The single fact of being able to say, "I never seduced any woman," is a
very great thing, and we may well doubt whether many of his detractors
could say as much. But let us relate facts.
In London the mother of a beautiful girl, hard pressed for money, had
recourse to Lord Byron for a large sum, making him an unnatural offer at
the same time. The mother's depravity filled him with horror. Many men
in his place would have been satisfied with expressing this sentiment
either in words or by silence. But that was not enough for his noble
heart, and he subtracted from his pleasures or his necessities a sum
sufficient to save the honor of the unfortunate girl. At another time,
shortly before his marriage, a charming young person, full of talent,
requiring help, through some adverse family circumstances, and attracted
to Lord Byron by some presentiment of his generosity, became
passionately _in love_ with him. She could not live without his image
before her. The history of her passion is quite a romance. Utterly
absorbed by it, she was forever seeking pretexts for seeing him. A word,
a sign, was all she required to become any thing he wished. But Lord
Byron, aware he could not make her happy and respectable, never allowed
that word to pass his lips, and his language breathed only counsels of
wisdom and virtue.[46]
Even at Venice, when his heart had no preference, we find him saving a
young girl of noble birth from the danger caused by his involuntary
fascinations.[47] In Romagna, at Pisa, in Greece, he also gave similar
proofs of virtue and of his delicate sense of honor.
Let us now examine his words. In 1813, with regard to "The
Monk," by Lewis, which he had just read, Lord Byron wrote in his
memoranda:--"These descriptions might be written by Tiberius, at
Caprera. They are overdrawn; the essence of vicious voluptuousness. As
to me, I can not conceive how they could come from the pen of a man of
twenty, for Lewis was only that age when he wrote 'The Monk.' These
pages are not natural; they distill cantharides.
"I had never read this work, and have just been looking over it out of
sheer curiosity, from a remembrance of the noise the book made, and the
name it gave Lewis. But really such things can not even be dangerous."
About the same period Mr. Allen, a friend of Lord Holland, very
learned--a perfect Magliabecchi--a devourer of books, and an observer of
mankind, lent Lord Byron a quantity of unpublished letters by the poet
Burns--letters that were very unfit to see the light of day, being full
of oaths and obscene songs. After reading them, Lord Byron wrote in his
memoranda:----
"What an antithetical intelligence! Tenderness and harshness, refinement
and vulgarity, sentiment and sensuality; now soaring up into ether, and
then dragging along in mud. Mire and sublimity; all that is strangely
blended in this admixture of inspired dust. It may seem strange, but to
me it appears that a true voluptuary should never abandon his thought to
the coarseness of reality. It is only by exalting whatever terrestrial,
material, physical element there is in our pleasures, by veiling these
ideas, or forgetting them quite, or, at least, by never boldly naming
them to ourselves, only thus can we avoid disgust."
This is how Lord Byron understood voluptuousness. We might multiply such
quotations without end, taking them from every period of his life; all
would prove the same thing.
As to his poetry written at this time, especially the lyrical pieces
where he expresses his own sentiments, what can there be more chaste,
more ethereal? When a boy, he begins by consigning to the flames a whole
edition of his first poems, on account of a single one, which the Rev.
Dr. Beecher considered as expressing sentiments too warm for a young
man. In his famous satire, written at twenty, he blames Moore's poetry
for its effeminate and Epicurean tendencies, and he stigmatized as evil
the whole poem of "The Ausonian Nun," and all the sensualities contained
in it. In his "Childe Harold," his Eastern tales, his lyric poems above
all, where he displays the sentiments of his own heart, every thing is
chaste and ethereal. The way in which the public appreciated these poems
may be summed up in the words used by the Rev. Mr. Dallas--the living
type of Puritanism in its most exaggerated form--at a date when, through
many causes, Lord Byron no longer even enjoyed his good graces.
"After 1816," says he (the time at which Lord Byron left England), "I
had no more personal intercourse with him, but I continued to read his
new poems with the greatest pleasure until he brought out 'Don Juan.'
That I perused with a real sorrow that no admiration could overcome.
Until then his truly English muse had despised the licentious tone
belonging to poets of low degree. But, in writing 'Don Juan,' he allied
his _chaste and noble genius_ with minds of that stamp."
And then he adds, nevertheless, that into whatsoever error Lord Byron
fell, whatsoever his sin (on account of the beginning of "Don Juan"), he
did not long continue to mix his pure gold with base metal, but ceased
to sully his lyre by degrees as he progressed with the poem.
Whether Dallas be right or not in speaking thus of "Don Juan," we do not
wish here to examine. In quoting his words, my sole desire is to declare
that, until the appearance of this poem, Lord Byron's muse had been,
even for a Dallas, the _chaste muse of Albion_. This avowal from such a
man is worthy of note, and renders unnecessary any other quotation.
We must not, however, pass over in silence Mr. Galt's very remarkable
opinion on this subject:--
"Certainly," says he, "there are some very fine compositions on love in
Lord Byron's works, but there is not a _single line_ among the thousand
he wrote which shows a _sexual_ sentiment. With him, all breathes the
_purest_ voluptuousness. All is vague as regards love, and _without
material passion_, except in the delicious rhythm of his verses."
And elsewhere he says:--
"It is most singular that, with all his tender, passionate apostrophes
to love, Lord Byron _should not once have associated it with sensual
images_. Not even in 'Don Juan,' where he has described voluptuous
beauties with so much elegance."
Then, quoting from "Hebrew Melodies,"----
SHE WALKS IN BEAUTY.
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!
"Behold in these charming lines," continues Galt, "a perfect sample of
his _ethereal admiration_, his _immaterial_ enthusiasm.
"The sentiment contained in this fine poetry," says he, "beyond all
doubt belongs to the highest order of intellectual beauty;" and it
seemed proved to him that love, in Lord Byron, was rather a metaphysical
conception than a sensual passion. He remarked that even when Lord
Byron recalls the precocious feelings of his childhood toward his little
cousins--feelings so strong as to make him lose sleep, appetite, peace;
when he describes them, still unable to explain them--we feel that they
were passions much more ethereal with him than with children in general.
"It should be duly remarked," says Galt, "that there is not a single
circumstance in his souvenirs which shows, despite the strength of their
natural sympathy, the smallest influence of any particular attraction.
He recollects well the color of her hair, the shade of her eyes, even
the dress she wore, but he remembers his little Mary as if she were a
Peri, a pure spirit; and it does not appear that his torments and his
wakefulness haunted with the thought of his little cousin, were in any
way produced by jealousy, or doubt, or fears, or any other consequence
of passion."
And when Galt speaks of "Tasso's Lament," he expresses the same opinion,
namely, that in his writings Lord Byron treats of love as of a
metaphysical conception, and that the fine verses he has put into the
mouth of Tasso would still better become himself:--
"It is no marvel--from my very birth
My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth:
Of objects all inanimate I made
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers,
And rocks, whereby they grew, a Paradise,
Where I did lay me down within the shade
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours."
"The truth is," adds Galt, by way of conclusion, "that no poet has ever
described love better than Lord Byron in that particular _ethereal_
shade:----
"'His love was passion's essence:--as a tree
On fire by lightning, with ethereal flame
Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be
Thus, and enamor'd, were in him the same.
But his was not the love of living dame,
Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams,
But of ideal beauty, which became
In him existence, and o'erflowing teems
Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.'"
"_Childe Harold_," canto iii. stanza 78.
And even if it should be denied that love, in Lord Byron's writings, as
indeed in himself, was purely metaphysical, it must, at least, be
acknowledged that it was chaste. This would be more easily recognizable
if the letters dictated by his heart, if his _love-letters,_ were known.
But since we can not open these intimate treasures of his heart to the
public, we will speak of those given us in his writings, and we will
thence draw our conclusions: firstly, in regard to the characters he
gives to all his heroines; secondly, as to the pictures he makes of love
in passages where he speaks seriously, and in his own name.
LORD BYRON'S FEMALE CHARACTERS.
What poet of energy has ever painted woman more chaste, more gentle and
sweet, than Lord Byron?
"One of the distinguishing excellences of Lord Byron," says one of his
best critics, "is that which may be found in all his productions,
whether romantic, classical, or fantastical, an intense sentiment of the
loveliness of woman, and the faculty, not only of drawing individual
forms, but likewise of infusing into the very atmosphere surrounding
them, the essence of beauty and love. A soft roseate hue, that seems to
penetrate down to the bottom of the soul, is spread over them."
More than any other genius, Lord Byron had the magic power of conjuring
up before our imagination the ideal image of his subject. He was not at
all perplexed how to clothe his ideas. That quality, so sought after by
other writers, and so necessary for hiding faults, was quite natural to
him. When he describes women, a few rapid strokes suffice to engrave an
indelible image on the mind of the reader. Let us take for examples:----
Leila, in the "Giaour."
Zuleika, in the "Bride of Abydos."
Medora, in the "Corsair."
Theresa, in "Mazeppa."
Haidee, in "Don Juan."
Adah, in "Cain."
The gentle Medora, ensconced within the solitary tower where she awaits
her Conrad, is fully portrayed in the melancholy song stealing on the
strings of her guitar, and in the tender, chaste words with which she
greets her lover.
Zuleika, the lovely, innocent, and pure bride of Selim, has her image
graven in the following fine lines:--
"Fair, as the first that fell of womankind,
When on that dread yet lovely serpent smiling,
Whose image then was stamp'd upon her mind--
But once beguiled--and evermore beguiling;
Dazzling, as that, oh! too transcendent vision
To Sorrow's phantom-peopled slumber given,
When heart meets heart again in dreams Elysian,
And paints the lost on Earth revived in Heaven;
Soft as the memory of buried love;
Pure, as the prayer which Childhood wafts above,
Was she--the daughter of that rude old Chief,
Who met the maid with tears--but not of grief.
"Who hath not proved how freely words essay
To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might, the majesty of Loveliness?
Such was Zuleika, such around her shone
The 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 harmonized the whole,
And, oh! that eye was in itself a Soul!
Her graceful arms in meekness bending
Across her gently-budding breast;
At one kind word those arms extending
To clasp the neck of him who blest
His child, caressing and carest."[48]
* * * * *
THERESA.
Theresa's form--
Methinks it glides before me now,
Between me and yon chestnut's bough,
The memory is so quick and warm;
And yet I find no words to tell
The shape of her I loved so well;
She had the Asiatic eye,
Such as our Turkish neighborhood
Hath mingled with our Polish blood,
Dark as above us is the sky;
But through it stole a tender light,
Like the first moonrise of midnight;
Large, dark, and swimming in the stream,
Which seem'd to melt to its own beam;
All love, half languor, and half fire,
Like saints that at the stake expire,
And lift their raptured looks on high,
As though it were a joy to die.
A brow like a midsummer lake,
Transparent with the sun therein
When waves no murmur dare to make,
And heaven beholds her face within.
A cheek and lip--but why proceed?
I loved her then, I love her still;
And such as I am, love indeed
In fierce extremes--in good and ill.
* * * * *
LEILA.
Her eye's dark charm 'twere vain to tell,
But gaze on that of the Gazelle,
It will assist thy fancy well;
As large, as languishingly dark,
But Soul beam'd forth in every spark
That darted from beneath the lid,
Bright as the jewel of Giamschid.
Yea, _Soul_, and should our Prophet say
That form was naught but breathing clay,
By Allah! I would answer nay;
Though on Al-Sirat's arch I stood,
Which totters o'er the fiery flood,
With Paradise within my view,
And all his Houris beckoning through.
Oh! who young Leila's glance could read
And keep that portion of his creed
Which saith that woman is but dust,
A soulless toy for tyrant's lust?
On her might Muftis gaze, and own
That through her eye the Immortal shone;
On her fair cheek's unfading hue
The young pomegranate's blossoms strew
Their bloom in blushes ever new;
Her hair in hyacinthine flow,
When left to roll its folds below,
As midst her handmaids in the hall
She stood superior to them all,
Hath swept the marble where her feet
Gleam'd whiter than the mountain sleet
Ere from the cloud that gave it birth
It fell, and caught one stain of earth.
The cygnet nobly walks the water;
So moved on earth Circassia's daughter--
The loveliest bird of Franguestan!
As rears her crest the ruffled Swan,
And spurns the waves with wings of pride,
When pass the steps of stranger man
Along the banks that bound her tide;
Thus rose fair Leila's whiter neck:--
Thus arm'd with beauty would she check
Intrusion's glance, till Folly's gaze
Shrunk from the charms it meant to praise.
Thus high and graceful was her gait;
Her heart as tender to her mate;
Her mate--stern Hassan, who was he?
Alas! that name was not for thee!
ADAH.
Adah is the wife of Cain. It is especially as the drama develops itself
that Lord Byron brings out the full charm of Adah's beautiful nature--a
nature at once primitive, tender, generous, and Biblical.
CAIN.
_Lucifer._ Approach the things of earth most beautiful,
And judge their beauty near.
_Cain._ I have done this--
The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest.
_Lucifer._ What is that?
* * * * * * *
_Cain._ My sister Adah.--All the stars of heaven,
The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world--
The hues of twilight--the sun's gorgeous coming--
His setting indescribable, which fills
My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold
Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him
Along that western paradise of clouds--
The forest shade--the green bough--the bird's voice--
The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love,
And mingles with the song of cherubim,
As the day closes over Eden's walls:--
All these are nothing, to my eyes and heart,
Like Adah's face: I turn from earth and heaven
To gaze on it.
Even those charming children of Nature, Haidee and Dudu, in "Don Juan,"
and the Neuha, in "The Island," scarcely meant to represent more than
the visible material part of the ideal woman he could love if he met
with her--even these charming creatures possess not only the pagan
beauty of form, but also Christian beauty, that of the soul: goodness,
gentleness, tenderness. And it is also to be remarked, that by degrees,
as time wore on, Lord Byron's female types rose in the moral scale,
while still preserving their adorable charms, and their harmony with the
state of civilization wherein he placed them. For instance, his Haidee,
in the second canto of "Don Juan," written at Venice in 1818, is not
worth, morally, the Haidee of the fourth canto, written at Ravenna in
1820. Beneath his pen at Ravenna, the adorable maiden evidently becomes
spiritualized. This may be attributed to the poet's state of mind, for
he was quite different at Ravenna to what he had been at Venice. The
portrait of this lovely child is certainly very charming in 1818, but,
while admiring her spotless Grecian brow, her beautiful hair, large
Eastern eyes, and noble mouth, we can not help remarking something vague
and undecided about her. And even in those fine verses where he says
that Haidee's face belongs to a type inconceivable for human thought,
and still more impossible of execution for mortal chisel, it is still
the beauty of form that he shows you; while the Haidee of Ravenna is
quite spiritualized in all her exquisite beauty.
After having described her as she appeared in her delicious Eastern
costume, Lord Byron expresses himself in these terms:--
"Her hair's long auburn waves down to her heel
Flow'd like an alpine torrent, which the sun
Dyes with his morning light,--and would conceal
Her person if allow'd at large to run;
And still they seem'd resentfully to feel
The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun
Their bonds, whene'er some Zephyr, caught, began
To offer his young pinion as her fan.
"Round her she made an atmosphere of life,
The very air seem'd lighter from her eyes,
They were so soft and beautiful, and rife
With all we can imagine of the skies,
And pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife--
Too pure even for the purest human ties;
Her overpowering presence made you feel
It would not be idolatry to kneel."
And, describing the whiteness of her skin, he says:--
"Day ne'er will break
On mountain-tops more heavenly white than her;
The eye might doubt of it were well awake,
She was so like a vision."
In the sixth canto of "Don Juan"--the hero being in the midst of a
harem--all his sympathies are for Dudu, a beautiful Circassian, who
unites to all the charms, all the moral qualities that a slave of the
harem might possess. This is the portrait which Lord Byron draws:--
XLII.
"A kind of sleepy Venus seem'd Dudu,
Yet very fit to 'murder sleep' in those
Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue,
Her Attic forehead and her Phidian nose.
* * * * * * *
XLIII.
"She was not violently lively, but
Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking.
* * * * * * *
LII.
"Dudu, as has been said, was a sweet creature,
Not very dashing, but extremely winning,
With the most regulated charms of feature,
Which painters can not catch like faces sinning
Against proportion--the wild strokes of nature
Which they hit off at once in the beginning,
Full of expression, right or wrong, that strike,
And, pleasing or unpleasing, still are like.
LIII.
"But she was a soft landscape of mild earth,
Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet,
Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth,
Which, if not happiness, is much more nigh it
Than are your mighty passions and so forth,
Which some call 'the sublime:' I wish they'd try it:
I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women,
And pity lovers rather more than seamen.
LIV.
"But she was pensive more than melancholy,
And serious more than pensive, and serene,
It may be, more than either: not unholy
Her thoughts, at least till now, appear to have been.
The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was wholly
Unconscious, albeit turn'd of quick seventeen,
That she was fair, or dark, or short, or tall;
She never thought about herself at all.
LV.
"And therefore was she kind and gentle as
The Age of Gold (when gold was yet unknown)."
As to Neuha, the daughter of Ocean (in "The Island"), his last creation,
she is, indeed, the daughter of Nature also, and no less admirable than
her sister Haidee, but she is still more highly endowed in a moral
sense:--
"The infant of an infant world, as pure
From nature--lovely, warm, and premature;
Dusky like night, but night with all her stars,
Or cavern sparkling with its native spars;
With eyes that were a language and a spell,
A form like Aphrodite's in her shell,
With all her loves around her on the deep,
Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep;
Yet full of life--for through her tropic cheek
The blush would make its way, and all but speak:
The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw
O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue,
Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave,
Which draws the diver to the crimson cave.
Such was this daughter of the southern seas,
Herself a billow in her energies,
To bear the bark of others' happiness.
Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less:
Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew
No joy like what it gave; her hopes ne'er drew
Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose
Sad proof reduces all things from their hues:
She fear'd no ill, because she knew it not."
When, after the combat, she arrives in her bark to save Torquil, the
poet exclaims:
"And who the first that springing on the strand,
Leap'd like a nereid from her shell to land,
With dark but brilliant skin, and dewy eye
Shining with love, and hope, and constancy?
Neuha--the fond, the faithful, the adored--
Her heart on Torquil's like a torrent pour'd;
And smiled, and wept, and near, and nearer clasp'd
As if to be assured 'twas _him_ she grasp'd;
Shuddered to see his yet warm wound, and then,
To find it trivial, smiled and wept again.
She was a warrior's daughter, and could bear
Such sights, and feel, and mourn, but not despair.
Her lover lived,--nor foes nor fears could blight,
That full-blown moment in its all delight:
Joy trickled in her tears, joy filled the sob
That rock'd her heart till almost heard to throb;
And paradise was breathing in the sigh
Of nature's child in nature's ecstasy."
"All these sweet creations realize the idea, formed from all time, of
surpassing loveliness, of gentleness with passion," justly observes
Monsieur Nisard--he who, in his very clever sketch of the illustrious
poet, so often forms erroneous judgments of Lord Byron. For he also
accepted him as he was presented--namely, as the victim of calumny and
prejudice; or else he considered him after a system, examining only some
_passages and one single period_ of the man's and the _poet's_ life,
instead of taking the whole career and the general spirit of his
writings,--a method also perceivable in his appreciation of Lord Byron's
female characters.
Indeed Monsieur Nisard evidently only speaks of the Medoras, Zuleikas,
Leilas, and in general of all the types in his Eastern poems, and
appertaining to his first period: most fascinating beings undoubtedly,
true emanations of the purest and most passionate love, but yet as
morally inferior to the Angiolinas, Myrrhas, Josephines, Auroras, as his
poems of the first period are intellectually inferior to those of the
second, beginning with the third canto of "Childe Harold," and as
civilized Christian woman is superior to a woman in the harem. But
Monsieur Nisard, who has a very systematic way of judging
things--wishing to prove that Lord Byron's loves were quite lawless in
their ungovernable strength, filling the whole soul to the absorption of
every other sentiment and interest (which might, indeed, perhaps be said
of the personages in his Eastern poems), and not able, without
contradicting himself, to assert the same as regards the love and
devotion shown by the heroic Myrrhas and virtuous Angiolinas, and other
dramatic types, all so different one from the other--has been obliged to
omit all mention of them, thus sharing an error common to vain, ignorant
critics. Yet these delightful creatures all resemble each other in the
one faculty of _loving passionately and chastely_, for that is a quality
which constitutes the very essence of woman, and Lord Byron's own
qualities must always have drawn it out in her. But there is something
far beyond beauty and passion in these noble and heroic creations of his
second manner.
"Where shall we find," says Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, "a purer, higher
character than that of Angiolina, in the 'Doge of Venice?' Among all
Shakspeare's female characters there is certainly not one more true, and
not only true and natural, which would be slight merit, but true as a
type of the highest, rarest order in human nature. Let us stop here for
a moment, we are on no common ground; the character of Angiolina has not
yet been understood."
Bulwer then quotes the scene between Marian and Angiolina, and after
having pointed out its moral beauty, exclaims:--
"What a deep sentiment of the dignity of virtue! Angiolina does not even
conceive that she can be suspected, or that the insult offered her
required any other justification than the indignation of public
opinion."
And Bulwer goes on to quote the verses where Marian asks Angiolina if,
when she gave her hand to a man of age so disproportioned, and of a
character so opposite to her own, she loved this spouse, this friend of
her family; and whether, before marriage, her heart had not beat for
some noble youth more worthy to be the husband of beauty like hers; or
whether since, she had met with some one who might have aspired to her
lovely self. And after Angiolina's admirable reply, Bulwer says:--
"Is not this conception equal at least to that of Desdemona? Is not her
heart equally pure, serene, tender, and at the same time passionate, yet
with love, not material but _actual_, which, according to Plato, gives a
visible form to virtue, and then admits of no other rival. Yet this
sublime noble woman had no cold stiffness in her nature; she forgives
Steno, but not from the cold height, of her chastity.
"'If,' said she to the indignant page, 'oh! if this false and light
calumniator were to shed his blood on account of this absurd calumny,
never from that moment would my heart experience an hour's happiness,
nor enjoy a tranquil slumber.'"
"Here," says Bulwer, "the reader should remark with what delicate
artifice the tenderness of sex and charity heighten and warm the snowy
coldness of her ethereal superiority. What a union of all woman's finest
qualities! Pride that disdains calumny; gentleness that forgives it!
Nothing can be more simply grand than the whole of this character, and
the story which enhances it. An old man of eighty is the husband of a
young woman, whose heart preserves the calmness of purity; no love
episode comes to disturb her serene course, no impure, dishonorable
jealousy casts a shade on her bright name. She treads her path through
a life of difficulties, like some angelic nature, though quite human by
the form she wears."
Wishing only to call attention to the beauty of the female characters he
created, without reference to the other beauties contained in the work,
we shall continue to quote Bulwer for the second of these admirable
creations of womankind in his dramas, namely, Myrrha. After having
praised that magnificent tragedy "Sardanapalus," he adds:--
"But the principal beauty of this drama is the conception of Myrrha.
This young Greek slave, so tender and courageous, in love with her lord
and master, yet sighing after her liberty; adoring equally her natal
land and the gentle barbarian: what a new and dramatic combination of
sentiments! It is in this conflict of emotions that the master's hand
shows itself with happiest triumph.
"The heroism of this beautiful Ionian never goes beyond nature, yet
stops only at sublimest limits. The proud melancholy that blends with
her character, when she thinks of her fatherland; her ardent, generous,
_unselfish_ love, her passionate desire of elevating the soul of
Sardanapalus, so as to justify her devotion to him, the earnest yet
sweet severity that reigned over her gentlest qualities, showing her
faithful and fearless, capable of sustaining with, a firm hand the torch
that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her religion) both
Assyrian and Greek; all these combinations are the result of the purest
sentiments, the noblest art. The last words of Myrrha on the funereal
pyre are in good keeping with the grand conception of her character.
With the natural aspirations of a Greek, her thoughts turn at this
moment to her distant clime; but still they come back at the same time
to her lord, who is beside her, and blending almost in one sigh the two
contrary affections of her soul, Myrrha cries:--
"Then farewell, thou earth!
And loveliest spot of earth! farewell, Ionia!
Be thou still free and beautiful, and far
Aloof from desolation! My last prayer
Was for thee, my last thoughts, save _one_, were of thee!
_Sar._ And that?
_Myr._ Is yours."
"The principal charm," says Moore, "and the life-giving angel of this
tragedy, is Myrrha, a beautiful, heroic, devoted, ethereal creature,
enamored of the generous, infatuated monarch, yet ashamed of loving a
barbarian, and using all her influence over him to elevate as well as
gild his life, and to arm him against the terror of his end. Her
voluptuousness is that of the heart, her heroism that of the
affections."
Another admirable character, full of Christian beauty, is that of
Josephine in "Werner."
"Josephine," said the "Review," when "Werner" appeared, "is a model of
real spotless virtue. A true woman in her perfection, not only does she
preserve the character of her sex by her general integrity, but she also
possesses a wife's tender, sweet, and constant affection. She cherishes
and consoles her afflicted husband through all the adversities of his
destiny and the consequences of his faults.
"Italian by birth, the contrast between the beauties and circumstances
of her native country compared with the frontiers of Silesia, where a
pretty feudal tyranny exists, displays still more the fine sentiments
that characterize her."
We shall close this long list of admirable conceptions (which one quits
with regret, so great is their charm) by giving some extracts from the
portrait he was engaged on, when death, alas! caused the pencil to drop
from his fingers: we mean Aurora Raby in "Don Juan:"--
"Aurora Raby, a young star who shone
O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass;
A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded,
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded;
* * * * * * *
"Early in years, and yet more infantine
In figure, she had something of sublime
In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine.
All youth--but with an aspect beyond time;
Radiant and grave as pitying man's decline;
Mournful--but mournful of another's crime,
She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door,
And grieved for those who could return no more."
And then:--
"She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere,
As far as her own gentle heart allow'd."
And again:--
"She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew,
As seeking not to know it; silent, lone,
As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew,
And kept her heart serene within its zone.
There was awe in the homage which she drew:
Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne
Apart from the surrounding world, and strong
In its own strength--most strange in one so young!"
* * * * * * *
"High, yet resembling not his lost Haidee;
Yet each was radiant in her proper sphere."
* * * * * * *
"The difference in them
Was such as lies between a flower and gem."
"_Don Juan_," canto xv.
Now that we have seen Lord Byron's ideal of womankind, let us mark with
what sentiments they inspired him, and in what way love always presented
itself to his heart or his imagination. Ever dealing out toward him the
same measure of justice and truth, people have gone on complacently
repeating that his love sometimes became a very frenzy, or anon
degenerated into a sensation rather than a sentiment. And his poetry has
been asserted to contain proof of this in the actions, characters, and
words of the persons there portrayed. I think, then, that the best way
of ascertaining the degree of truth belonging to these asseverations, is
to let him speak himself, on this sentiment, at all the different
periods of his life:--
"Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven;
A spark of that immortal fire
With angels shared, by Allah given
To lift from earth our low desire.
Devotion wafts the mind above,
But Heaven itself descends in love;
A feeling from the Godhead caught,
To wean from self each sordid thought;
A Ray of Him who form'd the whole;
A Glory circling round the soul!
I grant _my_ love imperfect, all
That mortals by the name miscall;
Then deem it evil, what thou wilt;
But say, oh say, _hers_ was not guilt!
She was my life's unerring light:
That quench'd, what beam shall break my night?"
"_The Giaour._"
In 1817, at Venice, when his heart, at twenty-nine years of age, was
devoid of any real love, and had even arrived at never loving, although
suffering deeply from the void thus created, Lord Byron giving vent to
his feelings wrote thus:--
"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place,
With one fair Spirit for my minister,
That I might all forget the human race,
And, hating no one, love but only her!
Ye elements!--in whose ennobling stir
I feel myself exalted--Can ye not
Accord me such a being? Do I err
In deeming such inhabit many a spot?
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot."[49]
At the same period, he also unveils his soul, in guessing that of
Tasso:--
"And with my years my soul began to pant
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain;
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want,
But undefined and wandering, till the day
I found the thing I sought--and that was thee;
And then I lost my being, all to be
Absorb'd in thine; the world was pass'd away;
_Thou_ didst annihilate the earth to me!"
"_The Lament of Tasso._"
A short time after, having described the charm of the pine forest at
Ravenna, seen by twilight, he begins to paint the happiness of two
loving hearts--of Juan and Haidee, and says:--
VIII.
"Young Juan and his lady-love were left
To their own hearts' most sweet society;
Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft
With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms.
* * * * * * *
They could not be
Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring,
Before one charm or hope had taken wing.
IX.
"Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their
Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail!
The blank gray was not made to blast their hair,
But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail,
They were all summer; lightning might assail
And shiver them to ashes, but to trail
A long and snake-like life of dull decay
Was not for them--they had too little clay.
X.
"They were alone once more; for them to be
Thus was another Eden; they were never
Weary, unless when separate: the tree
Cut from its forest root of years--the river
Damn'd from its fountain--the child from the knee
And breast maternal wean'd at once forever,--
Would wither less than these two torn apart;
Alas! there is no instinct like the heart.
XII.
"'Whom the gods love die young,' was said of yore,
And many deaths do they escape by this:
The death of friends, and that which slays even more--
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is,
Except mere breath;
* * * * * * *
Perhaps the early grave
Which men weep over, may be meant to save.
XIII.
"Haidee and Juan thought not of the dead.
The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for them:
They found no fault with Time, save that he fled;
They saw not in themselves aught to condemn;
Each was the other's mirror.
* * * * * * *
XVI.
"Moons changing had roll'd on, and changeless found
Those their bright rise had lighted to such joys
As rarely they beheld throughout their round;
And these were not of the vain kind which cloys,
For theirs were buoyant spirits, never bound
By the mere senses; and that which destroys
Most love, possession, unto them appear'd
A thing which each endearment more endear'd.
XVII.
"Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful!
But theirs was love in which the mind delights
To lose itself, when the old world grows dull.
And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights,
Intrigues, adventures of the common school,
Its petty passions, marriages, and flights,
Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more,
Whose husband only knows her not a wh--re.
XVIII.
"Hard words; harsh truth; a truth which many know.
Enough.--The faithful and the fairy pair,
Who never found a single hour too slow,
What was it made them thus exempt from care?
Young innate feelings all have felt below,
Which perish in the rest, but in them were
Inherent; what we mortals call romantic,
And always envy, though we deem it frantic.
XIX.
"This is in others a factitious state,
* * * * * * *
But was in them their nature or their fate.
* * * * * * *
XX.
"They gazed upon the sunset: 'tis an hour
Dear unto all, but dearest to _their_ eyes,
For it had made them what they were: the power
Of love had first o'erwhelm'd them from such skies,
When happiness had been their only dower,
And twilight saw them link'd in passion's ties;
Charm'd with each other, all things charm'd that brought
The past still welcome as the present thought.
* * * * * * *
XXVI.
"Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other
With swimming looks of speechless tenderness,
Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother;
All that the best can mingle and express
When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another,
And love too much, and yet can not love less;
But almost sanctify the sweet excess
By the immortal wish and power to bless.
XXVII.
"Mix'd in each other's arms, and heart in heart,
Why did they not then die?--they had lived too long
Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart;
Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong."
"_Don Juan,"_ canto iv.
It was this love which caused Campbell the poet to say:
"If the love of Juan and Haidee is not pure and innocent, and expressed
with delicacy and propriety, then may we at once condemn and blot out
this tender passion of the soul from the list of a poet's themes. Then
must we shut our eyes and harden our hearts against that passion which
sways our whole existence, and quite become mere creatures of hypocrisy
and formality, and accuse Milton himself of madness."
At Ravenna, where Lord Byron composed so many sublime works, he also
wrote "Sardanapalus" and "Heaven and Earth." He was then thirty-two
years of age. The love predominating in these two dramas is that which
swayed his own soul, the same sentiment which, a year later, also
inspired the beautiful poem composed on his way from Ravenna to Pisa.
No quotation could convey an idea of the noble energetic feeling
animating these two dramas, for adequate language is wanting; impervious
to words, the sentiment they contain is like a spirit pervading, or a
ray of light warming and illuminating them.
They require to be read throughout. I prefer to quote his words on love,
in the 16th canto of "Don Juan," and in "The Island," because they are
the last traced by his pen. Written a few days previous to his fatal
departure for Greece, it can not be doubted that the sentiment which
dictated them was the same that accompanied him to his last hour.
CVII.
* * * * * * *
"And certainly Aurora had renew'd
In him some feelings he had lately lost,
Or harden'd; feelings which, perhaps ideal,
Are so divine, that I must deem them real:--
CVIII.
"The love of higher things and better days;
The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance
Of what is call'd the world, and the world's ways;
The moments when we gather from a glance
More joy than from all future pride or praise,
Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance
The heart in an existence of its own,
Of which another's bosom is the zone."[50]
And then, in describing the happiness of two lovers, in his poem of "The
Island," a few days before setting out for Greece, he says again:--
"Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre,
With such devotion to their ecstasy,
That life knows no such rapture as to die;
And die they do; for earthly life has naught
Match'd with that burst of nature, even in thought;
And all our dreams of better life above
But close in one eternal gush of love."
After speaking of the religious enthusiast, and saying that his soul
preceded his dust to heaven, he adds:--
"Is love less potent? No--his path is trod,
Alike uplifted gloriously to God;
Or link'd to all we know of heaven below,
The other better self, whose joy or woe
Is more than ours."
But enough of quotations; and now what poet has ever written or spoken
of love with words and images more chaste, more truly welling from his
own heart? We feel that he has given us the key to that. And if, after
all these demonstrations, there still remain any readers who continue to
accept as true the pleasantries, satires, and mystifications contained
in some of his verses, I do not pretend to write for them. They are to
be pitied, but there is no hope of convincing them. That depends on
their quality of mind. The only thing possible, then, is to recall some
of those anecdotes which, while justifying them in a measure, yet at the
same time illustrate Lord Byron's way of acting. I will select one. When
Lord Byron was at Pisa a friend of Shelley's, whom he sometimes saw, had
formed a close intimacy with Lady B----, a woman of middle-age but of
high birth. The tie between them was evidently the result of vanity on
Mr. M----'s side, and, as she was the mother of a large family, it was
doubly imperative on her to be respectable. But that did not prevent Mr.
M---- from boasting of his success, and even (that he might be believed)
from going into disgusting details in his eagerness for praise.
One day that Mr. M---- was in the same _salon_ (at Mrs. Sh----'s house)
with Lord Byron and the Countess G----, the conversation turned upon
women and love in general, whereupon Mr. M---- lauded to the skies the
devotedness, constancy, and truth of the sex. When he had finished his
sentimental "tirade," Lord Byron took up the opposite side, going on as
Don Juan or Childe Harold might. It was easy to see he was playing a
part, and that his words, partly in jest, partly ironical, did not
express his thoughts. Nevertheless they gave pain to Mme. G----, and, as
soon as they were alone, Lord Byron having asked her why she was sad,
she told him the cause.
"I am very sorry to have grieved you," said he, "but how could you think
that I was talking seriously?"
"I did not think it," she said, "but those who do not know you will
believe all; M---- will not fail to repeat your words as if they were
your real opinions; and the world, knowing neither him nor you, will
remain convinced that he is a man full of noble sentiments, and you a
real Don Juan, not indeed your own charming youth, but Moliere's Don
Juan!"
"Very probably," said Lord Byron; "and that will be another true page to
add to M----'s note-book. I can't help it. I couldn't resist the
temptation of punishing M---- for his vanity. All those eulogiums and
sentimentalities about women were to make us believe how charming they
had always been toward him, how they had always appreciated his merits,
and how passionately in love with him Lady B---- is now. My words were
meant to throw water on his imaginary fire."
Alas! it was on such false appearances that they made up, then and
since, the Lord Byron still believed in by the generality of persons.
Lord Byron by his marriage gave another pledge of having renounced the
foibles of the heart and the allurements of the senses; and it is very
certain that he redeemed his word. If, through susceptibility or any
other defect, Lady Byron, going back to the past or trusting to vile,
revengeful, and interested spies, did not know how to understand him,
all Lord Byron's friends did, whether or not they dared to say so. And
he himself, who never could tell a lie, has assured us of his married
fidelity.[51] His life in Switzerland was devoted to study, retreat, and
even austerity. How little this stood him in stead with his enemies is
well known. "I never lived in a more edifying manner than at Geneva," he
said to Mr. Medwin. "My reputation has not gained by it. Nevertheless,
when there is mortification, there ought to be a reward."[52]
When he arrived at Milan many ladies belonging to the great world were
most anxious to know him; these presentations were proposed to him, and
he refused. As to his life at Venice, a wicked sort of romance has been
made of it, by exaggerating most ordinary things, and heaping invention
upon invention; but this has been explained with sufficient detail in
another chapter, where all the different causes of these exaggerations
have been shown in their just measure of truth.[53]
Here, then, I will only say, that if, on arriving at Venice, he relaxed
his austerity to lead the life common to young men without legitimate
ties: if, under the influence of that lovely sky, he did not remain
insensible to the songs of the beautiful Adriatic siren, nor trample
under foot the few flowers fate scattered on his path, to make amends
perhaps for the thorns that had so long beset it; if he sometimes
accepted distractions in the form of light pleasures, as well as in the
form of study,[54] did he not likewise always impose hard laborious
occupation upon his mind, thus chaining it to beautiful immaterial
things? Did his intellectual activity slacken? Was his soul less
energetic, less sublime? The works of genius that issued from his pen at
Venice are a sufficient reply. "Manfred," conceived on the summit of the
Alps, was written at Venice; the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" was
conceived and written at Venice. The "Lament of Tasso," "Mazeppa," the
"Ode to Venice," "Beppo" (from his studies of Berni), the first two
cantos of "Don Juan," were all written at Venice.
Moreover, it was there he collected materials for his dramas; there he
studied the Armenian language, making sufficient progress to translate
St. Paul's Epistles into English. And all that, in less than twenty-six
months, including his journeys to Rome and to Florence. Let moralists
say whether a man steeped in sensual pleasures could have done all that.
"The truth is," says Moore, "that, so far from the strength of his
intellect being impaired or dissipated by these irregularities, it never
was perhaps at any period of his life more than at Venice in full
possession of all its energies."[55]
All the concessions Moore was obliged to make, from a sort of weakness,
not to compromise his position, to certain extreme opinions in politics
or religion, cloaking in reality personal hatred; are they not all
destroyed by this single avowal?
Shelley, who came to Venice to see Lord Byron, said that all he
observed of Lord Byron's state during his visit gave him a much higher
idea of his intellectual grandeur than what he had noticed before. Then
it was, and under this impression, that Shelley sketched almost the
whole poem of "Julian and Maddalo." "It is in this latter character,"
says Moore, "that he has so picturesquely personated his noble friend;
his allusions to the 'Swan of Albion,' in the verses written on the
Engancennes hills, are also the result of this fit of enthusiastic
admiration." At Venice Lord Byron saw few English; but those he did see,
and who have spoken of him, have expressed themselves in the same way as
Shelley; which caused Galt to say, that even at Venice, with regard to
his pleasures, his conduct had been that of most young men! but that the
whole difference must have consisted in the extravagant delight he took
in exaggerating, through his conversation, not what was conducive to
honor, but, on the contrary, what was likely to do him harm. The whole
difference, however, does not lie here, but rather in the indiscretion
shown by some friends.[56] Among the best testimonies borne to his way
of living at Venice we must not forget that of Hoppner, who bore so high
a character, and who was the constant companion of his daily afternoon
walks; nor that of the excellent Father Pascal, who shared his morning
studies at the Armenian convent.[57]
But in this united homage to truth I can not pass over in silence nor
refrain from quoting the words of a very great mind, who, under the veil
of fiction, has written almost a biography of Lord Byron, and who too
independent, _though a Tory_, to _wish_ to conceal his thought, has
declared in the preface to his charming work of "Venetia" that Lord
Byron was really his hero.
This writer, after speaking of all the silly calumnies with which Lord
Byron was overwhelmed at one time, says of the two more especially
calculated to stir up opinion against him, those which accused him of
_libertinism_ and _atheism_:--
"A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have suspected that abandoned
profligacy is not very compatible with severe study, and that an author
is seldom loose in his life, even if he be licentious in his writings.
A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have been of opinion that a solitary
sage may be the antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying
the existence of a God; but there never are calm inquirers. The world,
on every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and even
in the case of Herbert (Lord Byron) and his writings, those who admired
his genius and the generosity of his soul were not content with
advocating, principally out of pique to his adversaries, his extreme
opinions on every subject--moral, political, and religious. Besides, it
must be confessed, there was another circumstance almost as fatal to
Herbert's character in England as his loose and heretical opinions. The
travelling English, during their visits to Geneva, found out that their
countryman solaced or enlivened his solitude by unhallowed ties. It is a
habit to which very young men, who are separated from or deserted by
their wives, occasionally have recourse. Wrong, no doubt, as most things
are, but, it is to be hoped, venial; at least in the case of any man who
is not also an atheist. This unfortunate mistress of Herbert was
magnified into a _seraglio_; extraordinary tales of the voluptuous life
of one who generally _at his studies outwatched the stars_, were rife in
English society; and
'Hoary marquises and stripling dukes,'
who were either _protecting opera-dancers_, or, still worse, _making
love to their neighbors' wives_, either looked grave when the name of
Herbert (Lord Byron) was mentioned in female society, or affectedly
confused, as if they could a tale unfold, if they were not convinced,
that the sense of propriety among all present was infinitely superior to
their sense of curiosity."
In addition to all the proofs given by the varied uses Lord Byron made
of his intellect we must not omit those furnished by the state of his
heart. If, too readily yielding at Venice to momentary and fleeting
attractions, Lord Byron had been led to squander the powers of youth, to
wish to extinguish his senses in order to open out a more vast horizon
to his intelligence; if, thus mistaking the means, he had, nevertheless,
weakened, enervated, degraded himself, would not his heart have been the
first victim sacrificed on the altar of light pleasures?
But, on the contrary, this heart which he had never succeeded in lulling
into more than a slumber, when the hour of awakening came, held dominion
by its own natural energy over the proud aspirations of his
intelligence, and found both his youth and faculty of loving unweakened,
and that he had a love capable of every sacrifice, a love as fresh as in
his very spring-tide.
Are such metamorphoses possible to withered souls? Moralists have never
met with a like phenomenon. On the contrary, they certify that in hearts
withered by the enjoyments of sense all generous feelings, all noble
aspirations become extinct.
If Lord Byron's anti-sensuality were not sufficiently proved by his
actions, words, writings, and by the undeniable testimony of those who
knew him, it might still be abundantly proved by his habits of life, and
all his tastes; to begin with his sobriety, which really was wonderful.
So much so, that if the proverb, _Tell me what you eat, and I will tell
you what you are_, be true, and founded on psychological observation,
one must admit that Lord Byron was almost an immaterial being.
His fine health, his strong and vigorous constitution, lead to the
presumption that, at least in childhood and during his boyish days, his
rule of life could not have differed from that of the class to which he
belonged. Nevertheless, his sobriety was remarkable even in early youth;
at eighteen he went with a friend, Mr. Pigott, to Tunbridge Wells, and
this gentleman says, "We retired to our own rooms directly after dinner,
for Byron did not care for drinking any more than myself."
But this natural sobriety became soon after the sobriety of an
anchorite, which lasted more or less all his life, and was a perfect
phenomenon. Not that he was insensible to the pleasures of good living,
and still less did he act from any vanity (as has been said by some
incapable of sacrificing the bodily appetites to the soul); his conduct
proceeded from the desire and resolution of making _matter_ subservient
to the _spirit_.
His rule of life was already in full force when he left England for the
first time. Mr. Galt, whom chance associated with Lord Byron on board
the same vessel bound from Gibraltar to Malta, affirms that Lord Byron,
during the whole voyage, seldom tasted wine; and that, when he did
occasionally take some, it was never more than half a glass mixed with
water. He ate but little; and never any meat; only bread and vegetables.
He made me think of the ghoul taking rice with a needle."
On board "La Salsette," returning from Constantinople, he himself wrote
to his friend and preceptor Drury, that the gnats which devoured the
_delicate body_ of Hobhouse had not much effect on him, because he lived
in a _more sober manner_.
As to his mode of living during his two years' absence from England we
can say nothing, except that he lived in climates where sobriety is the
rule, and that his letters expressed profound disgust at the complaints,
exacting tone, and effeminate tastes of his servants, and his own
preference for a monastic mode of life, and very probably also for
monastic diet. The testimony to his extraordinary sobriety becomes
unanimous as soon as he returns home.
Dallas, who saw him immediately on his landing in 1811, writes:--
"Lord Byron has adopted a mode of diet that any one else would have
called dying of hunger, and to which several persons even attributed his
lowness of spirits. He lived simply on small sea-biscuits, very thin;
only eating two of these, and often but one, a day, with one cup of
_green tea_, which he generally drank at one in the afternoon. He
assured me that was all the nourishment he took during the twenty-four
hours, and that, so far from this regime affecting his spirits, it made
him feel lighter and more lively; and, in short, gave him _greater
command over himself in all respects. This great abstinence is almost
incredible.... He thought great eaters were generally prone to anger,
and stupid._"[58]
It was about this time that he made the personal acquaintance of Moore
at a dinner given by Rogers for the purpose of bringing them together
and of reconciling them.
"As none of us," says Moore, "knew about his singular regime, our host
was not a little embarrassed on discovering, that there was nothing on
the table which his noble guest could eat or drink. Lord Byron did not
touch meat, fish, or wine; and as to the biscuits and soda-water he
asked for, there were, unfortunately, none in the house. He declared he
was equally pleased with potatoes and vinegar, and on this meagre
pittance he succeeded in making an agreeable dinner."[59]
About the same time, being questioned by one of his friends, who liked
good living, as to what sort of table they had at the Alfred Club, to
which he belonged, "It is not worth much," answered Lord Byron. "I speak
from hearsay; for what does cookery signify to a vegetable-eater? But
there are books and quiet; so, for what I care, they may serve up their
dishes as they like."
"Frequently," says Moore again, "during the first part of our
acquaintance we dined together alone, either at St. Alban's, or at his
old asylum, Stevens's. Although occasionally he consented to take a
little Bordeaux, he _always held to his system of abstaining from meat_.
He seemed truly persuaded that animal food must have some particular
influence on character. And I remember one day being seated opposite to
him, engaged in eating a beefsteak with good appetite, that, after
having looked at me attentively for several seconds, he said, gravely,
'Moore, does not this eating beefsteaks make you ferocious?'
"Among the numerous hours we passed together this spring, I remember
particularly his extreme gayety one evening on returning from a soiree,
when, after having accompanied Rogers home, Lord Byron--who, according
to his frequent custom, had not dined the last two days--feeling his
appetite no longer governable, asked for something to eat. Our repast,
at his choice, consisted only of bread and cheese; but I have rarely
made a gayer meal in my life."
In 1814 he relaxed his diet a little, so far as to eat fish now and
then; but he considered this an excessive indulgence. "I have made a
regular dinner for the first time since Sunday," he writes in his
journal. "Every other day tea and six dry biscuits. This dinner makes
me heavy, stupid, gives me horrible dreams (nevertheless, it only
consisted of a pint of Bucellas and fish; I do not touch meat, and take
but little vegetable). I wish I were in the country for exercise,
instead of refreshing myself with abstinence. _I am not afraid of a
slight addition of flesh; my bones can well support that! but the worst
of it is, that the devil arrives with plumpness, and I must drive him
away through hunger!_ I DO NOT WISH TO BE THE SLAVE OF MY APPETITE. If I
fall, my heart at least shall herald the race."[60]
Except the last phrase, which is more worldly or more human, might not
one fancy one's self listening to the confession or soliloquy of some
Christian philosopher of the fourth century: one of those who sought the
Theban deserts to measure their strength of soul and body in desperate
struggles with Nature; the confession of a Hilarion or a Jerome, rather
than that of a young man of twenty-three, brought up amid the
conveniences and luxuries surrounding the aristocracy of the most
aristocratic country in the world, where material comfort is best
appreciated?
Thus it was, nevertheless, that Lord Byron practiced epicureanism with
regard to his food, making very rare exceptions when he consented to
dine out.
If time, change of circumstances, and climate, caused some slight
modifications in his manner of living, his mode of life did not vary. At
Venice, Ravenna, and Genoa, this epicurean would never suffer meat on
his table; and he only made some rare exceptions, to avoid too much
singularity, at Pisa, where he invited some friends to dinner. Count
Gamba, after having spoken of the sobriety of his regimen on board the
vessel that took him to Greece, the Ionian Islands, and finally to
Missolonghi, says, "He ate nothing but vegetables and fish, and drank
only water. Our fear was," says he, "lest this excessive abstinence
should be injurious to his health!"
Alas! we know that it was. It is certain that this debilitating regime,
joined to such strong moral impressions, too strongly felt, undermined
Lord Byron's fine constitution, which had only resisted so long through
its extreme vigor and the rare purity of his blood.
The bodily exercise he took had the same object, and further added to
the injurious effect of his obstinate fasts. "I have not left my room
these four days past," he writes in his memorandum, April, 1814, at a
moment when his heart was agitated by a passion; "but I have been
fencing with Jackson an hour a day by way of exercise, _so as to get
matter under, and give sway to the ethereal part of my nature_. The more
I fatigue myself, the better my mind is for the rest of the day; and
then my evenings acquire that calm, that prostration and languor, that
are such a happiness to me. To-day I fenced for an hour, wrote an ode to
Napoleon Bonaparte, copied it out, ate six biscuits, drank four bottles
of soda-water, read the rest of the time, and then gave a load of advice
to poor H---- about his mistress, who torments him intolerably, enough
to make him consumptive. Ah! to be sure, it suits me well to be giving
lessons to----; it is true they are thrown to the winds."[61]
This desire of giving mind dominion over matter is shown equally in all
his tastes, all his preferences. Beauty in art consisted wholly for him
in the expression of heart and soul. He had a horror of realism in art;
the Flemish school inspired him with a sort of nausea. Certain material
points of beauty in women, that are generally admired, had no beauty for
him. The music he liked, and of which he never grew tired, was not
brilliant or difficult, but simple; that which awakens the most delicate
sentiments of the soul, which brings tears to the eye.
"I have known few persons," says Moore, "more alive than he to the
charms of simple music; and I have often seen tears in his eyes when
listening to the Irish Melodies. Among those that caused him these
emotions was the one beginning--
"When first I met thee, warm and young."
The words of this melody, besides the moral sentiment they express, also
admit a political meaning. Lord Byron rejected this meaning, and
delivered his soul over, with the liveliest motion, to the more natural
sentiment conveyed in that song."
"Only the fear of seeming to affect sensibility could have restrained
my tears," he said once, on hearing Mrs. D---- sing
"Could'st thou look."
"Very often," said Mme. G----, "I have seen him with tears in his eyes
when I was playing favorite airs to him on the piano, of which he never
got tired."[62]
Stendhall also speaks of Lord Byron's emotion while listening to a piece
of music by Mayer at Milan, and says that if he lived a hundred years he
could never forget the divine expression of his physiognomy while thus
engaged.
At most, Lord Byron could only admire for a moment material beauty
without expression in women; it might give rise to sensations, but could
never inspire him with the slightest sentiment.
We have said enough of the female characters he created: sweet
incarnations of the most amiable qualities of heart and soul. Let us add
here, that although greatly alive to beauty of form, he could not
believe in a fine woman's delicate feeling, unless her beauty were
accompanied by expression denoting her qualities of heart and mind.
Beauty of form, of feature, and of color were nothing to him, if a woman
had not also beauty of expression; if he could not see, he said, beauty
of soul in her eyes. "Beauty and goodness have always been associated in
my idea," said he, at Genoa, to the Countess B----, "for in my
experience I have generally seen them go together. What constitutes true
beauty for me," added he, "is the soul looking through the eyes.
Sometimes women that were called beautiful have been pointed out to me
that could never in the least have excited my feelings, because they
wanted physiognomy, or expression, which is the same thing; while
others, scarcely noticed, quite struck and attracted me by their
expression of face."
He admired Lady C---- very much, because, he said, her beauty expressed
purity, peace, dreaminess, giving the idea that she had never inspired
or experienced aught but holy emotions. He once thought of marrying
another young lady, because she excited the same feelings. All the women
who more or less interested him in England were remarkable for their
intellect or their education, including her whom he selected for his
companion through life. Only, with regard to her, he trusted too much to
reputation and appearance; he saw what she had, not what was wanting.
She was in great part the cause of his deadly antipathy to regular "blue
stockings;" but that did not change the necessity of intellect for
exciting his interest. It only required, he said, for the _dress to hide
the color of the stockings_. The name he gave to his natural daughter
belonged to a Venetian lady, whose cleverness he admired, and with whom
his acquaintance consisted in a mere exchange of thought. Often he has
been heard to say that he could never have loved a silly woman, however
beautiful; nor yet a vulgar woman, whether the defect were the result of
birth, or education, or tastes. He felt no attraction for that style of
woman since called "fast." Even among the light characters whose
acquaintance he permitted to himself at Venice, he avoided those who
were too bold. There lived then at Venice Mme. V----, a perfect siren.
All Venice was at her feet; Lord Byron would not know her, and at
Bologna he refused to make acquaintance with a person of still higher
rank, Countess M----, who was both charming and estimable, but who had
the fault in his eyes of attracting too much general admiration. Her air
of modesty and reserve was what principally drew him toward Miss
Milbank. At Ferrara, where he met Countess Mosti and thought her most
delightful, he did not feel the same sympathy for her sister, who was,
however, much more brilliant, and whose singing excited the admiration
of every one.
In order to be truly loved by Lord Byron, it was requisite for a woman
to live in a sort of illusive atmosphere for him, to appear somewhat
like an immaterial being, not subject to vulgar corporeal necessities.
Thence arose his antipathy (considered so singular) to see the woman he
loved eat. In short, spiritual and manly in his habits, he was equally
so with his person.
It sufficed to see his face, upon which there reigned such gentleness
allied to so much dignity; and his look, never to be forgotten; and the
unrivalled mouth, which seemed incapable of lending itself to any
material use; a simple glance enabled one to understand that this
privileged being was endowed with all noble passions, joined to an
instinctive horror of all that is low and vulgar in human nature. "His
beauty was quite independent of his dress," said Lady Blessington.
If, then, his nails were roseate as the shells of the ocean (according
to her expression); if his complexion was transparent; his teeth like
pearls; his hair glossy and curling; he had only to thank Providence for
having lavished on him and preserved to him so many free gifts. But it
is not easy to persuade others of such remarkable exceptions to the
general rule. Those who do not possess the same advantages are
incredulous; and, indeed, there were not wanting persons to deny, at
least in part, that he had them.
Soon after his death an account of him was published in the "London
Magazine," containing some truths mixed up with a heap of calumnies.
Among other things, it was said "that Lord Byron constantly wore
gloves." To which Count Pietro Gamba replied, "_That is not true_; Lord
Byron wore them less than any other man of his standing."
Another declared that his fingers were loaded with rings; he only wore
one, which was a token of affection. In his rooms hardly ordinary
comforts could be found. He was not one to carry about with him the
habits of his own country. Indeed, his habits consisted in having none.
During his travels, the most difficult to please were his valet and
other servants. "On his last journey," says Count Gamba, "he passed six
days without undressing."
His sole self-indulgence consisted in frequent bathing; for his only
craving was for extreme cleanliness. But, just as the disciples of
Epicurus would never have adopted his regimen, so would they equally
have refused to imitate this last enjoyment; which was a little too
manly for them, for his baths were mostly taken on Ocean's back;
struggling against the stormy wave, and that in all seasons, up to
mid-December. Such was the fastidious delicacy of this epicurean![63]
But to acknowledge all these things, or even any thing extraordinarily
good in the author of "Don Juan," the "Age of Bronze," the "Vision;" in
a son so _wanting in respect_ for the weaknesses of his mother-country;
in a poet that had dared to chastise powerful enemies, and the limit of
whose audacity was not even yet known, for his death had just condemned,
through revelations and imprudent biographies, many persons and things
to a sorry kind of immortality; to praise him, declare him guiltless, do
him justice,--truly that would have been asking too much from England at
that time. England has since made great strides in the path of generous
toleration and even toward justice to Lord Byron. For vain is calumny
after a time: truth destroys calumny by evoking facts. These form a
clear atmosphere, wherein truth becomes luminous, as the sun in its
atmosphere: for facts give birth to truth, and are mortal to calumny.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 42: The history of the page is, however, true. Lord Byron was
then nineteen years of age. Not to give his mother the grief of seeing
that he had made an acquaintance she would have disapproved, he brought
Miss ---- from Brighton to the Abbey, dressed as a page, that she might
pass for her brother Gordon.]
[Footnote 43: See "Newstead Abbey," by Washington Irving.]
[Footnote 44: Moore, vol. i. p. 346.]
[Footnote 45: See Galt, "Life of Lord Byron."]
[Footnote 46: See chapter on "Generosity."]
[Footnote 47: See "Life in Italy."]
[Footnote 48: The heroism of the young Zuleika, says Mr. G. Ellis in his
criticism, is full of purity and loveliness. Never was a more perfect
character traced with greater delicacy and truth; her piety,
intelligence, her exquisite sentiment of duty and her unalterable love
of truth seem born in her soul rather than acquired by education. She is
ever natural, seductive, affectionate, and we must confess that her
affection for Selim is well placed.]
[Footnote 49: "Childe Harold," canto iv. stanza 177.]
[Footnote 50: See "Don Juan," canto xvi.]
[Footnote 51: See chapter on Marriage.]
[Footnote 52: Medwin, p. 13.]
[Footnote 53: See "Life in Italy."]
[Footnote 54: Ibid.]
[Footnote 55: Moore, vol. ii, p. 182.]
[Footnote 56: See "Life in Italy," at Venice.]
[Footnote 57: See "Life in Italy."]
[Footnote 58: Dallas, 171.]
[Footnote 59: Moore, 315.]
[Footnote 60: Moore, first vol.]
[Footnote 61: Moore, 315.]
[Footnote 62: See "Life in Italy."]
[Footnote 63: "He was more a mental being, if I may use this phrase,"
said Captain Parry, who knew him at Missolonghi, "than any one I ever
saw; he lived on thoughts more than on food."]