(TO THE CARE OF THE HON. MRS. LEIGH, LONDON.)
Pisa, November 17. 1821.
I have to acknowledge the receipt of 'Ada's hair,'which is very soft
and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve years
old, if I may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's
possession, taken at that age. But it don't curl,--perhaps from its
being let grow.
"I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name, and I
will tell you why;--I believe that they are the only two or three
words of your handwriting in my possession. For your letters I
returned, and except the two words, or rather the one word,
'Household,' written twice in an old account book, I have no other. I
burnt your last note, for two reasons:--firstly, it was written in a
style not very agreeable; and, secondly, I wished to take your word
without documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious
people.
I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about Ada's
birthday--the 10th of December, I believe. She will then be six, so
that in about twelve more I shall have some chance of meeting
her;--perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to go to England by business or
otherwise. Recollect, however, one thing, either in distance or
nearness;--every day which keeps us asunder should, after so long a
period, rather soften our mutual feelings, which must always have one
rallying-point as long as our child exists, which I presume we both
hope will be long after either of her parents.
The time which has elapsed since the separation has been considerably
more than the whole brief period of our union, and the not much
longer one of our prior acquaintance. We both made a bitter mistake;
but now it is over, and irrevocably so. For, at thirty-three on my
part, and a few years less on yours, though it is no very extended
period of life, still it is one when the habits and thought are
generally so formed as to admit of no modification; and as we could
not agree when younger, we should with difficulty do so now.
I say all this, because I own to you, that, notwithstanding every
thing, I considered our re-union as not impossible for more than a
year after the separation;--but then I gave up the hope entirely and
for ever. But this very impossibility of re-union seems to me at
least a reason why, on all the few points of discussion which can
arise between us, we should preserve the courtesies of life, and as
much of its kindness as people who are never to meet may preserve
perhaps more easily than nearer connections. For my own part, I am
violent, but not malignant; for only fresh provocations can awaken my
resentments. To you, who are colder and more concentrated, I would
just hint, that you may sometimes mistake the depth of a cold anger
for dignity, and a worse feeling for duty. I assure you that I bear
you _now_ (whatever I may have done) no resentment whatever.
Remember, that _if you have injured me_ in aught, this forgiveness is
something; and that, if I have _injured you_, it is something more
still, if it be true, as the moralists say, that the most offending
are the least forgiving.
"Whether the offence has been solely on my side, or reciprocal, or on
yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any but two
things,--viz. that you are the mother of my child, and that we shall
never meet again. I think if you also consider the two corresponding
points with reference to myself, it will be better for all three.
"Yours ever,
"NOEL BYRON."
It has been my plan, as must have been observed, wherever my
materials have furnished me with the means, to leave the subject of
my Memoir to relate his own story; and this object, during the two or
three years of his life just elapsed, I have been enabled by the rich
resources in my hands, with but few interruptions, to attain. Having
now, however, reached that point of his career from which a new start
was about to be taken by his excursive spirit, and a course, glorious
as it was brief and fatal, entered upon,--a moment of pause may be
permitted while we look back through the last few years, and for a
while dwell upon the spectacle, at once grand and painful, which his
life during that most unbridled period of his powers exhibited.
In a state of unceasing excitement, both of heart and brain,--for
ever warring with the world's will, yet living but in the world's
breath,--with a genius taking upon itself all shapes, from Jove down
to Scapin, and a disposition veering with equal facility to all
points of the moral compass,--not even the ancient fancy of the
existence of two souls within one bosom would seem at all adequately
to account for the varieties, both of power and character, which the
course of his conduct and writings during these few feverish years
displayed. Without going back so far as the Fourth Canto of Childe
Harold, which one of his bitterest and ablest assailants has
pronounced to be, "in point of execution, the sublimest poetical
achievement of mortal pen," we have, in a similar strain of strength
and splendour, the Prophecy of Dante, Cain, the Mystery of Heaven and
Earth, Sardanapalus,--all produced during this wonderful period of
his genius. To these also are to be added four other dramatic pieces,
which, though the least successful of his compositions, have yet, as
Poems, few equals in our literature; while, in a more especial
degree, they illustrate the versatility of taste and power so
remarkable in him, as being founded, and to this very circumstance,
perhaps, owing their failure, on a severe classic model, the most
uncongenial to his own habits and temperament, and the most remote
from that bold, unshackled license which it had been the great
mission of his genius, throughout the whole realms of Mind, to
assert.
In contrast to all these high-toned strains, and struck off during
the same fertile period, we find his Don Juan--in itself an epitome
of all the marvellous contrarieties of his character--the Vision of
Judgment, the Translation from Pulci, the Pamphlets on Pope, on the
British Review, on Blackwood,--together with a swarm of other light,
humorous trifles, all flashing forth carelessly from the same mind
that was, almost at the same moment, personating, with a port worthy
of such a presence, the mighty spirit of Dante, or following the dark
footsteps of Scepticism over the ruins of past worlds, with Cain.
All this time, too, while occupied with these ideal creations, the
demands upon his active sympathies, in real life, were such as almost
any mind but his own would have found sufficient to engross its every
thought and feeling. An amour, not of that light, transient kind
which "goes without a burden," but, on the contrary, deep-rooted
enough to endure to the close of his days, employed as restlessly
with its first hopes and fears a portion of this period as with the
entanglements to which it led, political and domestic, it embarrassed
the remainder. Scarcely, indeed, had this disturbing passion begun to
calm, when a new source of excitement presented itself in that
conspiracy into which he flung himself so fearlessly, and which
ended, as we have seen, but in multiplying the objects of his
sympathy and protection, and driving him to a new change of home and
scene.
When we consider all these distractions that beset him, taking into
account also the frequent derangement of his health, and the time and
temper he must have thrown away on the minute drudgery of watching
over every item of his household expenditure, the mind is lost in
almost incredulous astonishment at the wonders he was able to achieve
under such circumstances--at the variety and prodigality of power
with which, in the midst of such interruptions and hinderances, his
"bright soul broke out on every side," and not only held on its
course, unclogged, through all these difficulties, but even extracted
out of the very struggles and annoyances it encountered new nerve for
its strength, and new fuel for its fire.
While thus at this period, more remarkably than at any other during
his life, the unparalleled versatility of his genius was unfolding
itself, those quick, cameleon-like changes of which his character,
too, was capable were, during the same time, most vividly, and in
strongest contrast, drawn out. To the world, and more especially to
England,--the scene at once of his glories and his wrongs,--he
presented himself in no other aspect than that of a stern, haughty
misanthrope, self-banished from the fellowship of men, and, most of
all, from that of Englishmen. The more genial and beautiful
inspirations of his muse were, in this point of view, looked upon but
as lucid intervals between the paroxysms of an inherent malignancy of
nature; and even the laughing effusions of his wit and humour got
credit for no other aim than that which Swift boasted of, as the end
of all his own labours, "to vex the world rather than divert it."
How totally all this differed from the Byron of the social hour, they
who lived in familiar intercourse with him may be safely left to
tell. The sort of ferine reputation which he had acquired for himself
abroad prevented numbers, of course, of his countrymen, whom he would
have most cordially welcomed, from seeking his acquaintance. But, as
it was, no English gentleman ever approached him, with the common
forms of introduction, that did not come away at once surprised and
charmed by the kind courtesy and facility of his manners, the
unpretending play of his conversation, and, on a nearer intercourse,
the frank, youthful spirits, to the flow of which he gave way with
such a zest, as even to deceive some of those who best knew him into
the impression, that gaiety was after all the true bent of his
disposition.
To these contrasts which he presented, as viewed publicly and
privately, is to be added also the fact, that, while braving the
world's ban so boldly, and asserting man's right to think for himself
with a freedom and even daringness unequalled, the original shyness
of his nature never ceased to hang about him; and while at a distance
he was regarded as a sort of autocrat in intellect, revelling in all
the confidence of his own great powers, a somewhat nearer observation
enabled a common acquaintance at Venice[1] to detect, under all this,
traces of that self-distrust and bashfulness which had marked him as
a boy, and which never entirely forsook him through the whole of his
career.
[Footnote 1: The Countess Albrizzi--see her Sketch of his Character.]
Still more singular, however, than this contradiction between the
public and private man,--a contradiction not unfrequent, and, in some
cases, more apparent than real, as depending upon the relative
position of the observer,--were those contrarieties and changes not
less startling, which his character so often exhibited, as compared
with itself. He who, at one moment, was seen intrenched in the most
absolute self-will, would, at the very next, be found all that was
docile and amenable. To-day, storming the world in its strong-holds,
as a misanthrope and satirist--to-morrow, learning, with implicit
obedience, to fold a shawl, as a Cavaliere--the same man who had so
obstinately refused to surrender, either to friendly remonstrance or
public outcry, a single line of Don Juan, at the mere request of a
gentle Donna agreed to cease it altogether; nor would venture to
resume this task (though the chief darling of his muse) till, with
some difficulty, he had obtained leave from the same ascendant
quarter. Who, indeed, is there that, without some previous clue to
his transformations, could have been at all prepared to recognise the
coarse libertine of Venice in that romantic and passionate lover who,
but a few months after, stood weeping before the fountain in the
garden at Bologna? or, who could have expected to find in the close
calculator of sequins and baiocchi, that generous champion of Liberty
whose whole fortune, whose very life itself were considered by him
but as trifling sacrifices for the advancement, but by a day, of her
cause?
And here naturally our attention is drawn to the consideration of
another feature of his character, connected more intimately with the
bright epoch of his life now before us. Notwithstanding his strongly
marked prejudices in favour of rank and high birth, we have seen with
what ardour,--not only in fancy and theory, bet practically, as in
the case of the Italian Carbonari,--he embarked his sympathies
unreservedly on the current of every popular movement towards
freedom. Though of the sincerity of this zeal for liberty the seal
set upon it so solemnly by his death leaves us no room to doubt, a
question may fairly arise whether that general love of excitement,
let it flow from whatever source it might, by which, more or less,
every pursuit of his whole life was actuated, was not predominant
among the impulses that governed him in this; and, again, whether it
is not probable that, like Alfieri and other aristocratic lovers of
freedom, he would not ultimately have shrunk from the result of his
own equalising doctrines; and, though zealous enough in lowering
those _above_ his own level, rather recoil from the task of raising
up those who were _below_ it.
With regard to the first point, it may be conceded, without deducting
much from his sincere zeal in the cause, that the gratification of
his thirst of fame, and, above all, perhaps, that supply of
excitement so necessary to him, to whet, as it were, the edge of his
self-wearing spirit, were not the least of the attractions and
incitements which a struggle under the banners of Freedom presented
to him. It is also but too certain that, destined as he was to
endless disenchantment, from that singular and painful union which
existed in his nature of the creative imagination that calls up
illusions, and the cool, searching sagacity that, at once, detects
their hollowness, he could not long have gone on, even in a path so
welcome to him, without finding the hopes with which his fancy had
strewed it withering away beneath him at every step.
In politics, as in every other pursuit, his ambition was to be among
the first; nor would it have been from the want of a due appreciation
of all that is noblest and most disinterested in patriotism, that he
would ever have stooped his flight to any less worthy aim. The
following passage in one of his Journals will be remembered by the
reader:--"To be the first man _(not_ the Dictator), not the Sylla,
but the Washington, or Aristides, the leader in talent and truth, is
to be next to the Divinity." With such high and pure notions of
political eminence, he could not be otherwise than fastidious as to
the means of attaining it; nor can it be doubted that with the sort
of vulgar and sometimes sullied instruments which all popular leaders
must stoop to employ, his love of truth, his sense of honour, his
impatience of injustice, would have led him constantly into such
collisions as must have ended in repulsion and disgust; while the
companionship of those beneath him, a tax all demagogues must pay,
would, as soon as it had ceased to amuse his fancy for the new and
the ridiculous, have shocked his taste and mortified his pride. The
distaste with which, as appears from more than one of his letters, he
was disposed to view the personal, if not the political, attributes
of what is commonly called the Radical party in England, shows how
unsuited he was naturally to mix in that kind of popular fellowship
which, even to those far less aristocratic in their notions and
feelings, must be sufficiently trying.
But, even granting that all these consequences might safely be
predicted as almost certain to result from his engaging in such a
career, it by no means the more necessarily follows that, _once_
engaged, he would not have persevered in it consistently and
devotedly to the last; nor that, even if reduced to say, with Cicero,
"nil boni præter causam," he could not have so far abstracted the
principle of the cause from its unworthy supporters as, at the same
time, to uphold the one and despise the others. Looking back, indeed,
from the advanced point where we are now arrived through the whole of
his past career, we cannot fail to observe, pervading all its
apparent changes and inconsistencies, an adherence to the original
bias of his nature, a general consistency in the main, however
shifting and contradictory the details, which had the effect of
preserving, from first to last, all his views and principles, upon
the great subjects that interested him through life, essentially
unchanged.[1]
[Footnote 1: Colonel Stanhope, who saw clearly this leading character
of Byron's mind, has thus justly described it:--"Lord Byron's was a
versatile and still a stubborn mind; it wavered, but always returned
to certain fixed principles."]
At the worst, therefore, though allowing that, from disappointment or
disgust, he might have been led to withdraw all personal
participation in such a cause, in no case would he have shown himself
a recreant to its principles; and though too proud to have ever
descended, like Egalité, into the ranks of the people, he would have
been far too consistent to pass, like Alfieri, into those of their
enemies.
After the failure of those hopes with which he had so sanguinely
looked forward to the issue of the late struggle between Italy and
her rulers, it may be well conceived what a relief it was to him to
turn his eyes to Greece, where a spirit was now rising such as he had
himself imaged forth in dreams of song, but hardly could have even
dreamed that he should live to see it realised. His early travels in
that country had left a lasting impression on his mind; and whenever,
as I have before remarked, his fancy for a roving life returned, it
was to the regions about the "blue Olympus" he always fondly looked
back. Since his adoption of Italy as a home, this propensity had in a
great degree subsided. In addition to the sedatory effects of his new
domestic r, there had, at this time, grown upon him a degree of
inertness, or indisposition to change of residence, which, in the
instance of his departure from Ravenna, was with some difficulty
surmounted.
The unsettled state of life he was from thenceforward thrown into, by
the precarious fortunes of those with whom he had connected himself,
conspired with one or two other causes to revive within him all his
former love of change and adventure; nor is it wonderful that to
Greece, as offering _both_ in their most exciting form, he should
turn eagerly his eyes, and at once kindle with a desire not only to
witness, but perhaps share in, the present triumphs of Liberty on
those very fields where he had already gathered for immortality such
memorials of her day long past.
Among the causes that concurred with this sentiment to determine him
to the enterprise he now meditated, not the least powerful,
undoubtedly, was the supposition in his own mind that the high tide
of his poetical popularity had been for some time on the ebb. The
utter failure of the Liberal,--in which, splendid as were some of his
own contributions to it, there were yet others from his pen hardly to
be distinguished from the surrounding dross,--confirmed him fully in
the notion that he had at last wearied out his welcome with the
world; and, as the voice of fame had become almost as necessary to
him as the air he breathed, it was with a proud consciousness of the
yet untouched reserves of power within him he now saw that, if
arrived at the end of _one_ path of fame, there were yet others for
him to strike into, still more glorious.
That some such vent for the resources of his mind had long been
contemplated by him appears from a letter of his to myself, in which
it will be recollected he says,--"If I live ten years longer, you
will see that it is not over with me. I don't mean in literature, for
that is nothing; and--it may seem odd enough to say--I do not think
it was my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something,--the
times and Fortune permitting,--that 'like the cosmogony of the world
will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.'" He then adds this but too
true and sad prognostic:--"But I doubt whether my constitution will
hold out."
His zeal in the cause of Italy, whose past history and literature
seemed to call aloud for redress of her present vassalage and wrongs,
would have, no doubt, led him to the same chivalrous self-devotion in
her service, as he displayed afterwards in that of Greece. The
disappointing issue, however, of that brief struggle is but too well
known; and this sudden wreck of a cause so promising pained him the
more deeply from his knowledge of some of the brave and true hearts
embarked in it. The disgust, indeed, which that abortive effort left
behind, coupled with the opinion he had early formed of the
"hereditary bonds-men" of Greece, had kept him for some time in a
state of considerable doubt and misgiving as to their chances of ever
working out their own enfranchisement; nor was it till the spring of
this year, when, rather by the continuance of the struggle than by
its actual success, some confidence had begun to be inspired in the
trust-worthiness of the cause, that he had nearly made up his mind to
devote himself to its aid. The only difficulty that still remained to
retard or embarrass this resolution was the necessity it imposed of a
temporary separation from Madame Guiccioli, who was herself, as might
be expected, anxious to participate his perils, but whom it was
impossible he could think of exposing to the chances of a life, even
for men, so rude.
At the beginning of the month of April he received a visit from Mr.
Blaquiere, who was then proceeding on a special mission to Greece,
for the purpose of procuring for the Committee lately formed in
London correct information as to the state and prospects of that
country. It was among the instructions of this gentleman that he
should touch at Genoa and communicate with Lord Byron; and the
following note will show how cordially the noble poet was disposed to
enter into all the objects of the Committee.