Arrival at Newstead--Find it in Ruins--The old Lord and his Beetles--
The Earl of Carlisle becomes the Guardian of Byron--The Poet's acute
Sense of his own deformed Foot--His Mother consults a Fortune-teller
Mrs Byron, on her arrival at Newstead Abbey with her son, found it
almost in a state of ruin. After the equivocal affair of the duel,
the old lord lived in absolute seclusion, detested by his tenantry,
at war with his neighbours, and deserted by all his family. He not
only suffered the abbey to fall into decay, but, as far as lay in his
power, alienated the land which should have kept it in repair, and
denuded the estate of the timber. Byron has described the conduct of
the morose peer in very strong terms:--"After his trial he shut
himself up at Newstead, and was in the habit of feeding crickets,
which were his only companions. He made them so tame that they used
to crawl over him, and, when they were too familiar, he whipped them
with a wisp of straw: at his death, it is said, they left the house
in a body."
However this may have been, it is certain that Byron came to an
embarrassed inheritance, both as respected his property and the
character of his race; and, perhaps, though his genius suffered
nothing by the circumstance, it is to be regretted that he was still
left under the charge of his mother: a woman without judgment or
self-command; alternately spoiling her child by indulgence,
irritating him by her self-willed obstinacy, and, what was still
worse, amusing him by her violence, and disgusting him by fits of
inebriety. Sympathy for her misfortunes would be no sufficient
apology for concealing her defects; they undoubtedly had a material
influence on her son, and her appearance was often the subject of his
childish ridicule. She was a short and corpulent person. She rolled
in her gait, and would, in her rage, sometimes endeavour to catch him
for the purpose of inflicting punishment, while he would run round
the room, mocking her menaces and mimicking her motion.
The greatest weakness in Lord Byron's character was a morbid
sensibility to his lameness. He felt it with as much vexation as if
it had been inflicted ignominy. One of the most striking passages in
some memoranda which he has left of his early days, is where, in
speaking of his own sensitiveness on the subject of his deformed
foot, he described the feeling of horror and humiliation that came
over him when his mother, in one of her fits of passion, called him a
"lame brat."
The sense which Byron always retained of the innocent fault in his
foot was unmanly and excessive; for it was not greatly conspicuous,
and he had a mode of walking across a room by which it was scarcely
at all perceptible. I was several days on board the same ship with
him before I happened to discover the defect; it was indeed so well
concealed, that I was in doubt whether his lameness was the effect of
a temporary accident, or a malformation, until I asked Mr Hobhouse.
On their arrival from Scotland, Byron was placed by his mother under
the care of an empirical pretender of the name of Lavender, at
Nottingham, who professed the cure of such cases; and that he might
not lose ground in his education, he was attended by a respectable
schoolmaster, Mr Rodgers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero with
him. Of this gentleman he always entertained a kind remembrance.
Nor was his regard in this instance peculiar; for it may be said to
have been a distinguishing trait in his character, to recollect with
affection all who had been about him in his youth. The quack,
however, was an exception; whom (from having caused him to suffer
much pain, and whose pretensions, even young as he then was, he
detected) he delighted to expose. On one occasion, he scribbled down
on a sheet of paper, the letters of the alphabet at random, but in
the form of words and sentences, and placing them before Lavender,
asked him gravely, what language it was. "Italian," was the reply,
to the infinite amusement of the little satirist, who burst into a
triumphant laugh at the success of his stratagem.
It is said that about this time the first symptom of his predilection
for rhyming showed itself. An elderly lady, a visitor to his mother,
had been indiscreet enough to give him some offence, and slights he
generally resented with more energy than they often deserved. This
venerable personage entertained a singular notion respecting the
soul, which she believed took its flight at death to the moon. One
day, after a repetition of her original contumely, he appeared before
his nurse in a violent rage, and complained vehemently of the old
lady, declaring that he could not bear the sight of her, and then he
broke out into the following doggerel, which he repeated over and
over, crowing with delight.
In Nottingham county, there lives at Swan-green,
As curs'd an old lady as ever was seen;
And when she does die, which I hope will be soon,
She firmly believes she will go to the moon.
Mrs Byron, by the accession of her son to the family honours and
estate, received no addition to her small income; and he, being a
minor, was unable to make any settlement upon her. A representation
of her case was made to Government, and in consequence she was placed
on the pension-list for 300 pounds a-year.
Byron not having received any benefit from the Nottingham quack, was
removed to London, put under the care of Dr Bailey, and placed in the
school of Dr Glennie, at Dulwich; Mrs Byron herself took a house on
Sloan Terrace. Moderation in all athletic exercises was prescribed
to the boy, but Dr Glennie had some difficulty in restraining his
activity. He was quiet enough while in the house with the Doctor,
but no sooner was he released to play, than he showed as much
ambition to excel in violent exercises as the most robust youth of
the school; an ambition common to young persons who have the
misfortune to labour under bodily defects.
While under the charge of Dr Glennie, he was playful, good-humoured,
and beloved by his companions; and addicted to reading history and
poetry far beyond the usual scope of his age. In these studies he
showed a predilection for the Scriptures; and certainly there are
many traces in his works which show that, whatever the laxity of his
religious principles may have been in after-life, he was not
unacquainted with the records and history of our religion.
During this period, Mrs Byron often indiscreetly interfered with the
course of his education; and if his classical studies were in
consequence not so effectually conducted as they might have been, his
mind derived some of its best nutriment from the loose desultory
course of his reading.
Among the books to which the boys at Dr Glennie's school had access
was a pamphlet containing the narrative of a shipwreck on the coast
of Arracan, filled with impressive descriptions. It had not
attracted much public attention, but it was a favourite with the
pupils, particularly with Byron, and furnished him afterwards with
the leading circumstances in the striking description of the
shipwreck in Don Juan.
Although the rhymes upon the lunar lady of Notts are supposed to have
been the first twitter of his muse, he has said himself, "My first
dash into poetry was as early as 1800. It was the ebullition of a
passion for my first cousin, Margaret Parker. I was then about
twelve, she rather older, perhaps a year." And it is curious to
remark, that in his description of this beautiful girl there is the
same lack of animal admiration which we have noticed in all his
loves; he says of her:--
"I do not recollect scarcely anything equal to the transparent beauty
of my cousin, or to the sweetness of her temper, during the short
period of our intimacy: she looked as if she had been made out of a
rainbow, all beauty and peace." This is certainly poetically
expressed; but there was more true love in Pygmalion's passion for
his statue, and in the Parisian maiden's adoration of the Apollo.
When he had been nearly two years under the tuition of Dr Glennie, he
was removed to Harrow, chiefly in consequence of his mother's
interference with his studies, and especially by withdrawing him
often from school.
During the time he was under the care of Dr Glennie, he was more
amiable than at any other period of his life, a circumstance which
justifies the supposition, that, had he been left more to the
discipline of that respectable person, he would have proved a better
man; for, however much his heart afterwards became incrusted with the
leprosy of selfishness, at this period his feelings were warm and
kind. Towards his nurse he evinced uncommon affection, which he
cherished as long as she lived. He presented her with his watch, the
first he possessed, and also a full-length miniature of himself, when
he was only between seven and eight years old, representing him with
a profusion of curling locks, and in his hands a bow and arrow. The
sister of this woman had been his first nurse, and after he had left
Scotland he wrote to her, in a spirit which betokened a gentle and
sincere heart, informing her with much joy of a circumstance highly
important to himself. It was to tell her that at last he had got his
foot so far restored as to be able to put on a common boot, an event
which he was sure would give her great pleasure; to himself it is
difficult to imagine any incident which could have been more
gratifying.
I dwell with satisfaction on these descriptions of his early
dispositions; for, although there are not wanting instances of
similar warm-heartedness in his later years, still he never formed
any attachments so pure and amiable after he went to Harrow. The
change of life came over him, and when the vegetable period of
boyhood was past, the animal passions mastered all the softer
affections of his character.
In the summer of 1801 he accompanied his mother to Cheltenham, and
while he resided there the views of the Malvern hills recalled to his
memory his enjoyments amid the wilder scenery of Aberdeenshire. The
recollections were reimpressed on his heart and interwoven with his
strengthened feelings. But a boy gazing with emotion on the hills at
sunset, because they remind him of the mountains where he passed his
childhood, is no proof that he is already in heart and imagination a
poet. To suppose so is to mistake the materials for the building.
The delight of Byron in contemplating the Malvern hills, was not
because they resembled the scenery of Lochynagar, but because they
awoke trains of thought and fancy, associated with recollections of
that scenery. The poesy of the feeling lay not in the beauty of the
objects, but in the moral effect of the traditions, to which these
objects served as talismans of the memory. The scene at sunset
reminded him of the Highlands, but it was those reminiscences which
similar scenes recalled, that constituted the impulse which gave life
and elevation to his reflections. There is not more poesy in the
sight of mountains than of plains; it is the local associations that
throw enchantment over all scenes, and resemblance that awakens them,
binding them to new connections: nor does this admit of much
controversy; for mountainous regions, however favourable to musical
feeling, are but little to poetical.
The Welsh have no eminent bard; the Swiss have no renown as poets;
nor are the mountainous regions of Greece, nor of the Apennines,
celebrated for poetry. The Highlands of Scotland, save the equivocal
bastardy of Ossian, have produced no poet of any fame, and yet
mountainous countries abound in local legends, which would seem to be
at variance with this opinion, were it not certain, though I cannot
explain the cause, that local poetry, like local language or local
melody, is in proportion to the interest it awakens among the local
inhabitants, weak and ineffectual in its influence on the sentiments
of the general world. The "Rans de Vaches," the most celebrated of
all local airs, is tame and commonplace,--unmelodious, to all ears
but those of the Swiss "forlorn in a foreign land."
While in Cheltenham, Mrs Byron consulted a fortune-teller respecting
the destinies of her son, and according to her feminine notions, she
was very cunning and guarded with the sybil, never suspecting that
she might have been previously known, and, unconscious to herself, an
object of interest to the spaewife. She endeavoured to pass herself
off as a maiden lady, and regarded it as no small testimony of the
wisdom of the oracle, that she declared her to be not only a married
woman, but the mother of a son who was lame. After such a marvellous
proof of second-sightedness, it may easily be conceived with what awe
and faith she listened to the prediction, that his life should be in
danger from poison before he was of age, and that he should be twice
married; the second time to a foreign lady. Whether it was this same
fortune-teller who foretold that he would, in his twenty-seventh
year, incur some great misfortune, is not certain; but, considering
his unhappy English marriage, and his subsequent Italian liaison with
the Countess Guiccioli, the marital prediction was not far from
receiving its accomplishment. The fact of his marriage taking place
in his twenty-seventh year, is at least a curious circumstance, and
has been noticed by himself with a sentiment of superstition.