Transcribed by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE LIFE OF LORD BYRON
AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION
My present task is one of considerable difficulty; but I have long
had a notion that some time or another it would fall to my lot to
perform it. I approach it, therefore, without apprehension, entirely
in consequence of having determined, to my own satisfaction, the
manner in which the biography of so singular and so richly endowed a
character as that of the late Lord Byron should be treated, but still
with no small degree of diffidence; for there is a wide difference
between determining a rule for one's self, and producing, according
to that rule, a work which shall please the public.
It has happened, both with regard to the man and the poet, that from
the first time his name came before the public, there has been a
vehement and continual controversy concerning him; and the chief
difficulties of the task arise out of the heat with which the adverse
parties have maintained their respective opinions. The circumstances
in which he was placed, until his accession to the title and estates
of his ancestors, were not such as to prepare a boy that would be
father to a prudent or judicious man. Nor, according to the history
of his family, was his blood without a taint of sullenness, which
disqualified him from conciliating the good opinion of those whom his
innate superiority must have often prompted him to desire for
friends. He was branded, moreover, with a personal deformity; and
the grudge against Nature for inflicting this defect not only deeply
disturbed his happiness, but so generally affected his feelings as to
embitter them with a vindictive sentiment, so strong as, at times, to
exhibit the disagreeable energy of misanthropy. This was not all.
He enjoyed high rank, and was conscious of possessing great talents;
but his fortune was inadequate to his desires, and his talents were
not of an order to redeem the deficiencies of fortune. It likewise
so happened that while indulged by his only friend, his mother, to an
excess that impaired the manliness of his character, her conduct was
such as in no degree to merit the affection which her wayward
fondness inspired.
It is impossible to reflect on the boyhood of Byron without regret.
There is not one point in it all which could, otherwise than with
pain, have affected a young mind of sensibility. His works bear
testimony, that, while his memory retained the impressions of early
youth, fresh and unfaded, there was a gloom and shadow upon them,
which proved how little they had been really joyous.
The riper years of one so truly the nursling of pride, poverty, and
pain, could only be inconsistent, wild, and impassioned, even had his
temperament been moderate and well disciplined. But when it is
considered that in addition to all the awful influences of these
fatalities, for they can receive no lighter name, he possessed an
imagination of unbounded capacity--was inflamed with those
indescribable feelings which constitute, in the opinion of many, the
very elements of genius--fearfully quick in the discernment of the
darker qualities of character--and surrounded by temptation--his
career ceases to surprise. It would have been more wonderful had he
proved an amiable and well-conducted man, than the questionable and
extraordinary being who has alike provoked the malice and interested
the admiration of the world.
Posterity, while acknowledging the eminence of his endowments, and
lamenting the habits which his unhappy circumstances induced, will
regard it as a curious phenomenon in the fortunes of the individual,
that the progress of his fame as a poet should have been so similar
to his history as a man.
His first attempts, though displaying both originality and power,
were received with a contemptuous disdain, as cold and repulsive as
the penury and neglect which blighted the budding of his youth. The
unjust ridicule in the review of his first poems, excited in his
spirit a discontent as inveterate as the feeling which sprung from
his deformity: it affected, more or less, all his conceptions to
such a degree that he may be said to have hated the age which had
joined in the derision, as he cherished an antipathy against those
persons who looked curiously at his foot. Childe Harold, the most
triumphant of his works, was produced when the world was kindliest
disposed to set a just value on his talents; and his latter
productions, in which the faults of his taste appear the broadest,
were written when his errors as a man were harshest in the public
voice.
These allusions to the incidents of a life full of contrarieties, and
a character so strange as to be almost mysterious, sufficiently show
the difficulties of the task I have undertaken. But the course I
intend to pursue will relieve me from the necessity of entering, in
any particular manner, upon those debatable points of his personal
conduct which have been so much discussed. I shall consider him, if
I can, as his character will be estimated when contemporary surmises
are forgotten, and when the monument he has raised to himself is
contemplated for its beauty and magnificence, without suggesting
recollections of the eccentricities of the builder.
JOHN GALT.
CHAPTER I
Ancient Descent--Pedigree--Birth--Troubles of his Mother--Early
Education--Accession to the Title
The English branch of the family of Byron came in with William the
Conqueror; and from that era they have continued to be reckoned among
the eminent families of the kingdom, under the names of Buron and
Biron. It was not until the reign of Henry II. that they began to
call themselves Byron, or de Byron.
Although for upwards of seven hundred years distinguished for the
extent of their possessions, it does not appear, that, before the
time of Charles I., they ranked very highly among the heroic families
of the kingdom.
Erneis and Ralph were the companions of the Conqueror; but
antiquaries and genealogists have not determined in what relation
they stood to each other. Erneis, who appears to have been the more
considerable personage of the two, held numerous manors in the
counties of York and Lincoln. In the Domesday Book, Ralph, the
direct ancestor of the poet, ranks high among the tenants of the
Crown, in Notts and Derbyshire; in the latter county he resided at
Horestan Castle, from which he took his title. One of the lords of
Horestan was a hostage for the payment of the ransom of Richard Coeur
de Lion; and in the time of Edward I., the possessions of his
descendants were augmented by the addition of the Manor of Rochdale,
in Lancashire. On what account this new grant was given has not been
ascertained; nor is it of importance that it should be.
In the wars of the three Edwards, the de Byrons appeared with some
distinction; and they were also of note in the time of Henry V. Sir
John Byron joined Henry VII. on his landing at Milford, and fought
gallantly at the battle of Bosworth, against Richard III., for which
he was afterwards appointed Constable of Nottingham Castle and Warden
of Sherwood Forest. At his death, in 1488, he was succeeded by Sir
Nicholas, his brother, who, at the marriage of Arthur, Prince of
Wales, in 1501, was made one of the Knights of the Bath.
Sir Nicholas died in 1540, leaving an only son, Sir John Byron, whom
Henry VIII. made Steward of Manchester and Rochdale, and Lieutenant
of the Forest of Sherwood. It was to him that, on the dissolution of
the monasteries, the church and priory of Newstead, in the county of
Nottingham, together with the manor and rectory of Papelwick, were
granted. The abbey from that period became the family seat, and
continued so until it was sold by the poet.
Sir John Byron left Newstead and his other possessions to John Byron,
whom Collins and other writers have called his fourth, but who was in
fact his illegitimate son. He was knighted by Queen Elizabeth in
1579, and his eldest son, Sir Nicholas, served with distinction in
the wars of the Netherlands. When the great rebellion broke out
against Charles I., he was one of the earliest who armed in his
defence. After the battle of Edgehill, where he courageously
distinguished himself, he was made Governor of Chester, and gallantly
defended that city against the Parliamentary army. Sir John Byron,
the brother and heir of Sir Nicholas, was, at the coronation of James
I., made a Knight of the Bath. By his marriage with Anne, the eldest
daughter of Sir Richard Molyneux, he had eleven sons and a daughter.
The eldest served under his uncle in the Netherlands; and in the year
1641 was appointed by King Charles I., Governor of the Tower of
London. In this situation he became obnoxious to the refractory
spirits in the Parliament, and was in consequence ordered by the
Commons to answer at the bar of their House certain charges which the
sectaries alleged against him. But he refused to leave his post
without the king's command; and upon' this the Commons applied to the
Lords to join them in a petition to the king to remove him. The
Peers rejected the proposition.
On the 24th October, 1643, Sir John Byron was created Lord Byron of
Rochdale, in the county of Lancaster, with remainder of the title to
his brothers, and their male issue, respectively. He was also made
Field-Marshal-General of all his Majesty's forces in Worcestershire,
Cheshire, Shropshire and North Wales: nor were these trusts and
honours unwon, for the Byrons, during the Civil War, were eminently
distinguished. At the battle of Newbury, seven of the brothers were
in the field, and all actively engaged.
Sir Richard, the second brother of the first lord, was knighted by
Charles I. for his conduct at the battle of Edgehill, and appointed
Governor of Appleby Castle, in Westmorland, and afterwards of Newark,
which he defended with great honour. Sir Richard, on the death of
his brother, in 1652, succeeded to the peerage, and died in 1679.
His eldest son, William, the third lord, married Elizabeth, the
daughter of Viscount Chaworth, of Ireland, by whom he had five sons,
four of whom died young. William, the fourth lord, his son, was
Gentleman of the Bedchamber to Prince George of Denmark, and married,
for his first wife, a daughter of the Earl of Bridgewater, who died
eleven weeks after their nuptials. His second wife was the daughter
of the Earl of Portland, by whom he had three sons, who all died
before their father. His third wife was Frances, daughter of Lord
Berkley, of Stratton, from whom the poet was descended. Her eldest
son, William, born in 1722, succeeded to the family honours on the
death of his father in 1736. He entered the naval service, and
became a lieutenant under Admiral Balchen. In the year 1763 he was
made Master of the Staghounds; and in 1765, he was sent to the Tower,
and tried before the House of Peers, for killing his relation and
neighbour, Mr Chaworth, in a duel fought at the Star and Garter
Tavern, in Pall-mall.
This Lord William was naturally boisterous and vindictive. It
appeared in evidence that he insisted on fighting with Mr Chaworth in
the room where the quarrel commenced. They accordingly fought
without seconds by the dim light of a single candle; and, although Mr
Chaworth was the more skilful swordsman of the two, he received a
mortal wound; but he lived long enough to disclose some particulars
of the rencounter, which induced the coroner's jury to return a
verdict of wilful murder, and Lord Byron was tried for the crime.
The trial took place in Westminster Hall, and the public curiosity
was so great that the Peers' tickets of admission were publicly sold
for six guineas each. It lasted two days, and at the conclusion he
was unanimously pronounced guilty of manslaughter. On being brought
up for judgment he pleaded his privilege and was discharged. It was
to this lord that the poet succeeded, for he died without leaving
issue.
His brother, the grandfather of the poet, was the celebrated "Hardy
Byron"; or, as the sailors called him, "Foulweather Jack," whose
adventures and services are too well known to require any notice
here. He married the daughter of John Trevannion, Esq., of Carhais,
in the county of Cornwall, by whom he had two sons and three
daughters. John, the eldest, and the father of the poet, was born in
1751, educated at Westminster School, and afterwards placed in the
Guards, where his conduct became so irregular and profligate that his
father, the admiral, though a good-natured man, discarded him long
before his death. In 1778 he acquired extraordinary eclat by the
seduction of the Marchioness of Caermarthen, under circumstances
which have few parallels in the licentiousness of fashionable life.
The meanness with which he obliged his wretched victim to supply him
with money would have been disgraceful to the basest adulteries of
the cellar or garret. A divorce ensued, the guilty parties married;
but, within two years after, such was the brutal and vicious conduct
of Captain Byron, that the ill-fated lady died literally of a broken
heart, after having given birth to two daughters, one of whom still
survives.
Captain Byron then married Miss Catharine Gordon, of Gight, a lady of
honourable descent, and of a respectable fortune for a Scottish
heiress, the only motive which this Don Juan had for forming the
connection. She was the mother of the poet.
Although the Byrons have for so many ages been among the eminent
families of the realm, they have no claim to the distinction which
the poet has set up for them as warriors in Palestine, even though he
says--
Near Ascalon's tow'rs John of Horestan slumbers;
for unless this refers to the Lord of Horestan, who was one of the
hostages for the ransom of Richard I., it will not be easy to
determine to whom he alludes; and it is possible that the poet has no
other authority for this legend than the tradition which he found
connected with two groups of heads on the old panels of Newstead.
Yet the account of them is vague and conjectural, for it was not
until ages after the Crusades that the abbey came into the possession
of the family; and it is not probable that the figures referred to
any transactions in Palestine, in which the Byrons were engaged, if
they were put up by the Byrons at all. They were probably placed in
their present situation while the building was in possession of the
Churchmen.
One of the groups, consisting of a female and two Saracens, with eyes
earnestly fixed upon her, may have been the old favourite
ecclesiastical story of Susannah and the elders; the other, which
represents a Saracen with a European female between him and a
Christian soldier, is, perhaps, an ecclesiastical allegory,
descriptive of the Saracen and the Christian warrior contending for
the liberation of the Church. These sort of allegorical stories were
common among monastic ornaments, and the famous legend of St George
and the Dragon is one of them.
Into the domestic circumstances of Captain and Mrs Byron it would be
impertinent to institute any particular investigation. They were
exactly such as might be expected from the sins and follies of the
most profligate libertine of the age.
The fortune of Mrs Byron, consisting of various property, and
amounting to about 23,500 pounds, was all wasted in the space of two
years; at the end of which the unfortunate lady found herself in
possession of only 150 pounds per annum.
Their means being thus exhausted she accompanied her husband in the
summer of 1786 to France, whence she returned to England at the close
of the year 1787, and on the 22nd of January, 1788, gave birth, in
Holles Street, London, to her first and only child, the poet. The
name of Gordon was added to that of his family in compliance with a
condition imposed by will on whomever should become the husband of
the heiress of Gight. The late Duke of Gordon and Colonel Duff, of
Fetteresso, were godfathers to the child.
In the year 1790 Mrs Byron took up her residence in Aberdeen, where
she was soon after joined by Captain Byron, with whom she lived in
lodgings in Queen Street; but their reunion was comfortless, and a
separation soon took place. Still their rupture was not final, for
they occasionally visited and drank tea with each other. The Captain
also paid some attention to the boy, and had him, on one occasion, to
stay with him for a night, when he proved so troublesome that he was
sent home next day.
Byron himself has said that he passed his boyhood at Marlodge, near
Aberdeen; but the statement is not correct; he visited, with his
mother, occasionally among their friends, and among other places
passed some time at Fetteresso, the seat of his godfather, Colonel
Duff. In 1796, after an attack of the scarlet fever, he passed some
time at Ballater, a summer resort for health and gaiety, about forty
miles up the Dee from Aberdeen. Although the circumstances of Mrs
Byron were at this period exceedingly straitened, she received a
visit from her husband, the object of which was to extort more money;
and he was so far successful, that she contrived to borrow a sum,
which enabled him to proceed to Valenciennes, where in the following
year he died, greatly to her relief and the gratification of all who
were connected with him.
By her advances to Captain Byron, and the expenses she incurred in
furnishing the flat of the house she occupied after his death, Mrs
Byron fell into debt to the amount of 300 pounds, the interest on
which reduced her income to 135 pounds; but, much to her credit, she
contrived to live without increasing her embarrassments until the
death of her grandmother, when she received 1122 pounds, a sum which
had been set apart for the old gentlewoman's jointure, and which
enabled her to discharge her pecuniary obligations.
Notwithstanding the manner in which this unfortunate lady was treated
by her husband, she always entertained for him a strong affection
insomuch that, when the intelligence of his death arrived, her grief
was loud and vehement. She was indeed a woman of quick feelings and
strong passions; and probably it was by the strength and sincerity of
her sensibility that she retained so long the affection of her son,
towards whom it cannot be doubted that her love was unaffected. In
the midst of the neglect and penury to which she was herself
subjected, she bestowed upon him all the care, the love and
watchfulness of the tenderest mother.
In his fifth year, on the 19th of November, 1792, she sent him to a
day-school, where she paid about five shillings a quarter, the common
rate of the respectable day-schools at that time in Scotland. It was
kept by a Mr Bowers, whom Byron has described as a dapper, spruce
person, with whom he made no progress. How long he remained with Mr
Bowers is not mentioned, but by the day-book of the school it was at
least twelve months; for on the 19th of November of the following
year there is an entry of a guinea having been paid for him.
From this school he was removed and placed with a Mr Ross, one of the
ministers of the city churches, and to whom he formed some
attachment, as he speaks of him with kindness, and describes him as a
devout, clever little man of mild manners, good-natured, and
painstaking. His third instructor was a serious, saturnine, kind
young man, named Paterson, the son of a shoemaker, but a good scholar
and a rigid Presbyterian. It is somewhat curious in the record which
Byron has made of his early years to observe the constant endeavour
with which he, the descendant of such a limitless pedigree and great
ancestors, attempts to magnify the condition of his mother's
circumstances.
Paterson attended him until he went to the grammar-school, where his
character first began to be developed; and his schoolfellows, many of
whom are alive, still recollect him as a lively, warm-hearted, and
high-spirited boy, passionate and resentful, but withal affectionate
and companionable; this, however, is an opinion given of him after he
had become celebrated; for a very different impression has
unquestionably remained among some who carry their recollections back
to his childhood. By them he has been described as a malignant imp:
was often spoken of for his pranks by the worthy housewives of the
neighbourhood, as "Mrs Byron's crockit deevil," and generally
disliked for the deep vindictive anger he retained against those with
whom he happened to quarrel.
By the death of William, the fifth lord, he succeeded to the estates
and titles in the year 1798; and in the autumn of that year, Mrs
Byron, with her son and a faithful servant of the name of Mary Gray,
left Aberdeen for Newstead. Previously to their departure, Mrs Byron
sold the furniture of her humble lodging, with the exception of her
little plate and scanty linen, which she took with her, and the whole
amount of the sale did not yield SEVENTY-FIVE POUNDS.