First Acquaintance with Byron--Embark together--The Voyage
It was at Gibraltar that I first fell in with Lord Byron. I had
arrived there in the packet from England, in indifferent health, on
my way to Sicily. I had then no intention of travelling. I only
went a trip, intending to return home after spending a few weeks in
Malta, Sicily, and Sardinia; having, before my departure, entered
into the Society of Lincoln's Inn, with the design of studying the
law.
At this time, my friend, the late Colonel Wright, of the artillery,
was secretary to the Governor; and during the short stay of the
packet at the Rock, he invited me to the hospitalities of his house,
and among other civilities gave me admission to the garrison library.
The day, I well remember, was exceedingly sultry. The air was
sickly; and if the wind was not a sirocco, it was a withering
levanter--oppressive to the functions of life, and to an invalid
denying all exercise. Instead of rambling over the fortifications, I
was, in consequence, constrained to spend the hottest part of the day
in the library; and, while sitting there, a young man came in and
seated himself opposite to me at the table where I was reading.
Something in his appearance attracted my attention. His dress
indicated a Londoner of some fashion, partly by its neatness and
simplicity, with just so much of a peculiarity of style as served to
show, that although he belonged to the order of metropolitan beaux,
he was not altogether a common one.
I thought his face not unknown to me; I began to conjecture where I
could have seen him; and, after an unobserved scrutiny, to speculate
both as to his character and vocation. His physiognomy was
prepossessing and intelligent, but ever and anon his brows lowered
and gathered; a habit, as I then thought, with a degree of
affectation in it, probably first assumed for picturesque effect and
energetic expression; but which I afterwards discovered was
undoubtedly the occasional scowl of some unpleasant reminiscence: it
was certainly disagreeable--forbidding--but still the general cast of
his features was impressed with elegance and character.
At dinner, a large party assembled at Colonel Wright's; among others
the Countess of Westmorland, with Tom Sheridan and his beautiful
wife; and it happened that Sheridan, in relating the local news of
the morning, mentioned that Lord Byron and Mr Hobhouse had come in
from Spain, and were to proceed up the Mediterranean in the packet.
He was not acquainted with either.
Hobhouse had, a short time before I left London,, published certain
translations and poems rather respectable in their way, and I had
seen the work, so that his name was not altogether strange to me.
Byron's was familiar--the Edinburgh Review had made it so, and still
more the satire of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, but I was not
conscious of having seen the persons of either.
On the following evening I embarked early, and soon after the two
travellers came on board; in one of whom I recognised the visitor to
the library, and he proved to be Lord Byron. In the little bustle
and process of embarking their luggage, his Lordship affected, as it
seemed to me, more aristocracy than befitted his years, or the
occasion; and I then thought of his singular scowl, and suspected him
of pride and irascibility. The impression that evening was not
agreeable, but it was interesting; and that forehead mark, the frown,
was calculated to awaken curiosity, and beget conjectures.
Hobhouse, with more of the commoner, made himself one of the
passengers at once; but Byron held himself aloof, and sat on the
rail, leaning on the mizzen shrouds, inhaling, as it were, poetical
sympathy, from the gloomy Rock, then dark and stern in the twilight.
There was in all about him that evening much waywardness; he spoke
petulantly to Fletcher, his valet; and was evidently ill at ease with
himself, and fretful towards others. I thought he would turn out an
unsatisfactory shipmate; yet there was something redeeming in the
tones of his voice, when, some time after he had indulged his sullen
meditation, he again addressed Fletcher; so that, instead of finding
him ill-natured, I was soon convinced he was only capricious.
Our passage to Sardinia was tardy, owing to calms; but, in other
respects, pleasant. About the third day Byron relented from his rapt
mood, as if he felt it was out of place, and became playful, and
disposed to contribute his fair proportion to the general endeavour
to wile away the tediousness of the dull voyage. Among other
expedients for that purpose, we had recourse to shooting at bottles.
Byron, I think, supplied the pistols, and was the best shot, but not
very pre-eminently so. In the calms, the jolly-boat was several
times lowered; and, on one of those occasions, his Lordship, with the
captain, caught a turtle--I rather think two--we likewise hooked a
shark, part of which was dressed for breakfast, and tasted, without
relish; your shark is but a cannibal dainty.
As we approached the gulf, or bay, of Cagliari, in Sardinia, a strong
north wind came from the shore, and we had a whole disagreeable day
of tacking, but next morning, it was Sunday, we found ourselves at
anchor near the mole, where we landed. Byron, with the captain, rode
out some distance into the country, while I walked with Mr Hobhouse
about the town: we left our cards for the consul, and Mr Hill, the
ambassador, who invited us to dinner. In the evening we landed
again, to avail ourselves of the invitation; and, on this occasion,
Byron and his Pylades dressed themselves as aides-de-camp--a
circumstance which, at the time, did not tend to improve my
estimation of the solidity of the character of either. But such is
the force of habit: it appeared a less exceptionable affectation in
the young peer than in the commoner.
Had we parted at Cagliari, it is probable that I should have retained
a much more favourable recollection of Mr Hobhouse than of Lord
Byron; for he was a cheerful companion, full of odd and droll
stories, which he told extremely well; he was also good-humoured and
intelligent--altogether an advantageous specimen of a well-educated
English gentleman. Moreover, I was at the time afflicted with a
nervous dejection, which the occasional exhilaration produced by his
anecdotes and college tales often materially dissipated, though, for
the most part, they were more after the manner and matter of Swift
than of Addison.
Byron was, during the passage, in delicate health, and upon an
abstemious regimen. He rarely tasted wine, nor more than half a
glass, mingled with water, when he did. He ate little; no animal
food, but only bread and vegetables. He reminded me of the ghoul
that picked rice with a needle; for it was manifest, that he had not
acquired his knowledge of the world by always dining so sparely. If
my remembrance is not treacherous, he only spent one evening in the
cabin with us--the evening before we came to anchor at Cagliari; for,
when the lights were placed, he made himself a man forbid, took his
station on the railing between the pegs on which the sheets are
belayed and the shrouds, and there, for hours, sat in silence,
enamoured, it may be, of the moon. All these peculiarities, with his
caprices, and something inexplicable in the cast of his metaphysics,
while they served to awaken interest, contributed little to
conciliate esteem. He was often strangely rapt--it may have been
from his genius; and, had its grandeur and darkness been then
divulged, susceptible of explanation; but, at the time, it threw, as
it were, around him the sackcloth of penitence. Sitting amid the
shrouds and rattlins, in the tranquillity of the moonlight, churming
an inarticulate melody, he seemed almost apparitional, suggesting dim
reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a mystery in
a winding-sheet, crowned with a halo.
The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which hovered about
Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all who ever approached him.
That he sometimes came out of the cloud, and was familiar and
earthly, is true; but his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist,
and the home of his spirit in the abysm of the storm, and the hiding-
places of guilt. He was, at the time of which I am speaking,
scarcely two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than having
written a clever worldly-minded satire; and yet it was impossible,
even then, to reflect on the bias of his mind, as it was revealed by
the casualties of conversation, without experiencing a presentiment,
that he was destined to execute some singular and ominous purpose.
The description he has given of Manfred in his youth was of himself.
My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men,
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes;
The thirst of their ambition was not mine;
The aim of their existence was not mine.
My joys, my griefs, my passions, and my powers,
Made me a stranger. Though I wore the form,
I had no sympathy with breathing flesh.
My joy was in the wilderness--to breathe
The difficult air of the iced mountain's top.
Where the birds dare not build, nor insect's wing
Flit o'er the herbless granite; or to plunge
Into the torrent, and to roll along
On the swift whirl of the new-breaking wave
Of river, stream, or ocean, in their flow--
In these my early strength exulted; or
To follow through the night the moving moon,
The stars, and their development; or catch
The dazzling lightnings till my eyes grew dim;
Or to look listening on the scatter'd leaves,
While autumn winds were at their evening song;--
These were my pastimes--and to be alone.
For if the beings, of whom I was one--
Hating to be so--cross'd me in my path,
I felt myself degraded back to them,
And was all clay again.