O whare are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon?
O whare are ye gaen, sae bonny an' braw?
Ye've married, ye've married wi' Johnny Byron,
To squander the lands o' Gight awa'.
This youth is a rake, frae England he's come;
The Scots dinna ken his extraction ava;
He keeps up his misses, his landlord he duns,
That's fast drawen' the lands o' Gight awa'.
O whare are ye gaen, &c.
The shooten' o' guns, an' rattlin' o' drums,
The bugle in woods, the pipes i' the ha',
The beagles a howlin', the hounds a growlin';
These soundings will soon gar Gight gang awa'.
O whare are ye gaen, &c.
Soon after the marriage, which took place, I believe, at Bath, Mr.
Byron and his lady removed to their estate in Scotland; and it was
not long before the prognostics of this ballad-maker began to be
realised. The extent of that chasm of debt, in which her fortune was
to be swallowed up, now opened upon the eyes of the ill-fated heiress.
The creditors of Mr. Byron lost no time in pressing their demands; and
not only was the whole of her ready money, bank shares, fisheries,
&c., sacrificed to satisfy them, but a large sum raised by mortgage on
the estate for the same purpose. In the summer of 1786, she and her
husband left Scotland, to proceed to France; and in the following year
the estate of Gight itself was sold, and the whole of the purchase
money applied to the further payment of debts,--with the exception of
a small sum vested in trustees for the use of Mrs. Byron, who thus
found herself, within the short space of two years, reduced from
competence to a pittance of 150_l._ per annum.[10]
From France Mrs. Byron returned to England at the close of the year
1787; and on the 22d of January, 1788, gave birth, in Holles Street,
London, to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. The name of
Gordon was added in compliance with a condition imposed by will on
whoever should become husband of the heiress of Gight; and at the
baptism of the child, the Duke of Gordon, and Colonel Duff of
Fetteresso, stood godfathers.
In reference to the circumstance of his being an only child, Lord
Byron, in one of his journals, mentions some curious coincidences in
his family, which, to a mind disposed as his was to regard every thing
connected with himself as out of the ordinary course of events, would
naturally appear even more strange and singular than they are. "I have
been thinking," he says, "of an odd circumstance. My daughter (1), my
wife (2), my half-sister (3), my mother (4), my sister's mother (5),
my natural daughter (6), and myself (7), are, or were, all _only_
children. My sister's mother (Lady Conyers) had only my half-sister by
that second marriage, (herself, too, an only child,) and my father had
only me, an only child, by his second marriage with my mother, an only
child too. Such a complication of _only_ children, all tending to
_one_ family, is singular enough, and looks like fatality almost." He
then adds, characteristically, "But the fiercest animals have the
fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, and even elephants,
which are mild in comparison."
From London, Mrs. Byron proceeded with her infant to Scotland; and, in
the year 1790, took up her residence in Aberdeen, where she was soon
after joined by Captain Byron. Here for a short time they lived
together in lodgings at the house of a person named Anderson, in Queen
Street. But their union being by no means happy, a separation took
place between them, and Mrs. Byron removed to lodgings at the other
end of the street.[11] Notwithstanding this schism, they for some
time continued to visit, and even to drink tea with each other; but
the elements of discord were strong on both sides, and their
separation was, at last, complete and final. He would frequently,
however, accost the nurse and his son in their walks, and expressed a
strong wish to have the child for a day or two, on a visit with him.
To this request Mrs. Byron was, at first, not very willing to accede,
but, on the representation of the nurse, that "if he kept the boy one
night, he would not do so another," she consented. The event proved as
the nurse had predicted; on enquiring next morning after the child,
she was told by Captain Byron that he had had quite enough of his
young visitor, and she might take him home again.
It should be observed, however, that Mrs. Byron, at this period, was
unable to keep more than one servant, and that, sent as the boy was on
this occasion to encounter the trial of a visit, without the
accustomed superintendence of his nurse, it is not so wonderful that
he should have been found, under such circumstances, rather an
unmanageable guest. That as a child, his temper was violent, or rather
sullenly passionate, is certain. Even when in petticoats, he showed
the same uncontrollable spirit with his nurse, which he afterwards
exhibited when an author, with his critics. Being angrily reprimanded
by her, one day, for having soiled or torn a new frock in which he had
been just dressed, he got into one of his "silent rages" (as he
himself has described them), seized the frock with both his hands,
rent it from top to bottom, and stood in sullen stillness, setting his
censurer and her wrath at defiance.
But, notwithstanding this, and other such unruly outbreaks,--in which
he was but too much encouraged by the example of his mother, who
frequently, it is said, proceeded to the same extremities with her
caps, gowns, &c.,--there was in his disposition, as appears from the
concurrent testimony of nurses, tutors, and all who were employed
about him, a mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by
which it was impossible not to be attached; and which rendered him
then, as in his riper years, easily manageable by those who loved and
understood him sufficiently to be at once gentle and firm enough for
the task. The female attendant of whom we have spoken, as well as her
sister, Mary Gray, who succeeded her, gained an influence over his
mind against which he very rarely rebelled; while his mother, whose
capricious excesses, both of anger and of fondness, left her little
hold on either his respect or affection, was indebted solely to his
sense of filial duty for any small portion of authority she was ever
able to acquire over him.
By an accident which, it is said, occurred at the time of his birth,
one of his feet was twisted out of its natural position, and this
defect (chiefly from the contrivances employed to remedy it) was a
source of much pain and inconvenience to him during his early years.
The expedients used at this period to restore the limb to shape, were
adopted by the advice, and under the direction, of the celebrated John
Hunter, with whom Dr. Livingstone of Aberdeen corresponded on the
subject; and his nurse, to whom fell the task of putting on these
machines or bandages, at bedtime, would often, as she herself told my
informant, sing him to sleep, or tell him stories and legends, in
which, like most other children, he took great delight. She also
taught him, while yet an infant, to repeat a great number of the
Psalms; and the first and twenty-third Psalms were among the earliest
that he committed to memory. It is a remarkable fact, indeed, that
through the care of this respectable woman, who was herself of a very
religious disposition, he attained a far earlier and more intimate
acquaintance with the Sacred Writings than falls to the lot of most
young people. In a letter which he wrote to Mr. Murray, from Italy, in
1821 after requesting of that gentleman to send him, by the first
opportunity, a Bible, he adds--"Don't forget this, for I am a great
reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and
through before I was eight years old,--that is to say, the Old
Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a
pleasure. I speak as a boy, from the recollected impression of that
period at Aberdeen, in 1796."
The malformation of his foot was, even at this childish age, a subject
on which he showed peculiar sensitiveness. I have been told by a
gentleman of Glasgow, that the person who nursed his wife, and who
still lives in his family, used often to join the nurse of Byron when
they were out with their respective charges, and one day said to her,
as they walked together, "What a pretty boy Byron is! what a pity he
has such a leg!" On hearing this allusion to his infirmity, the
child's eyes flashed with anger, and striking at her with a little
whip which he held in his hand, he exclaimed impatiently, "Dinna speak
of it!" Sometimes, however, as in after life, he could talk
indifferently and even jestingly of this lameness; and there being
another little boy in the neighbourhood, who had a similar defect in
one of his feet, Byron would say, laughingly, "Come and see the twa
laddies with the twa club feet going up the Broad Street."
Among many instances of his quickness and energy at this age, his
nurse mentioned a little incident that one night occurred, on her
taking him to the theatre to see the "Taming of the Shrew." He had
attended to the performance, for some time, with silent interest; but,
in the scene between Catherine and Petruchio, where the following
dialogue takes place,--
_Cath._ I know it is the moon.
_Pet._ Nay, then, you lie,--it is the blessed sun,--
little Geordie (as they called the child), starting from his seat,
cried out boldly, "But I say it is the moon, sir."
The short visit of Captain Byron to Aberdeen has already been
mentioned, and he again passed two or three months in that city,
before his last departure for France. On both occasions, his chief
object was to extract still more money, if possible, from the
unfortunate woman whom he had beggared; and so far was he successful,
that, during his last visit, narrow as were her means, she contrived
to furnish him with the money necessary for his journey to
Valenciennes,[12] where, in the following year, 1791, he died. Though
latterly Mrs. Byron would not see her husband, she entertained, it is
said, a strong affection for him to the last; and on those occasions,
when the nurse used to meet him in her walks, would enquire of her
with the tenderest anxiety as to his health and looks. When the
intelligence of his death, too, arrived, her grief, according to the
account of this same attendant, bordered on distraction, and her
shrieks were so loud as to be heard in the street. She was, indeed, a
woman full of the most passionate extremes, and her grief and
affection were bursts as much of temper as of feeling. To mourn at
all, however, for such a husband was, it must be allowed, a most
gratuitous stretch of generosity. Having married her, as he openly
avowed, for her fortune alone, he soon dissipated this, the solitary
charm she possessed for him, and was then unmanful enough to taunt her
with the inconveniences of that penury which his own extravagance had
occasioned.
When not quite five years old, young Byron was sent to a day-school at
Aberdeen, taught by Mr. Bowers,[13] and remained there, with some
interruptions, during a twelvemonth, as appears by the following
extract from the day-book of the school:--
George Gordon Byron.
19th November, 1792.
19th November, 1793--paid one guinea.
The terms of this school for reading were only five shillings a
quarter, and it was evidently less with a view to the boy's advance in
learning than as a cheap mode of keeping him quiet that his mother had
sent him to it. Of the progress of his infantine studies at Aberdeen,
as well under Mr. Bowers as under the various other persons that
instructed him, we have the following interesting particulars
communicated by himself, in a sort of journal which he once began,
under the title of "My Dictionary," and which is preserved in one of
his manuscript books.
"For several years of my earliest childhood, I was in that city, but
have never revisited it since I was ten years old. I was sent, at five
years old, or earlier, to a school kept by a Mr. Bowers, who was
called '_Bodsy_ Bowers,' by reason of his dapperness. It was a school
for both sexes. I learned little there except to repeat by rote the
first lesson of monosyllables ('God made man'--'Let us love him'), by
hearing it often repeated, without acquiring a letter. Whenever proof
was made of my progress, at home, I repeated these words with the most
rapid fluency; but on turning over a new leaf, I continued to repeat
them, so that the narrow boundaries of my first year's accomplishments
were detected, my ears boxed, (which they did not deserve, seeing it
was by ear only that I had acquired my letters,) and my intellects
consigned to a new preceptor. He was a very devout, clever, little
clergyman, named Ross, afterwards minister of one of the kirks
(_East_, I think). Under him I made astonishing progress; and I
recollect to this day his mild manners and good-natured pains-taking.
The moment I could read, my grand passion was _history_, and, why I
know not, but I was particularly taken with the battle near the Lake
Regillus in the Roman History, put into my hands the first. Four years
ago, when standing on the heights of Tusculum, and looking down upon
the little round lake that was once Regillus, and which dots the
immense expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my old
instructor. Afterwards I had a very serious, saturnine, but kind young
man, named Paterson, for a tutor. He was the son of my shoemaker, but
a good scholar, as is common with the Scotch. He was a rigid
Presbyterian also. With him I began Latin in 'Ruddiman's Grammar,'
and continued till I went to the 'Grammar School, (_Scoticè_, 'Schule;
_Aberdonicè_, 'Squeel,') where I threaded all the classes to the
_fourth_, when I was recalled to England (where I had been hatched) by
the demise of my uncle. I acquired this handwriting, which I can
hardly read myself, under the fair copies of Mr. Duncan of the same
city: I don't think he would plume himself much upon my progress.
However, I wrote much better then than I have ever done since. Haste
and agitation of one kind or another have quite spoilt as pretty a
scrawl as ever scratched over a frank. The grammar-school might
consist of a hundred and fifty of all ages under age. It was divided
into five classes, taught by four masters, the chief teaching the
fourth and fifth himself. As in England, the fifth, sixth forms, and
monitors, are heard by the head masters."
Of his class-fellows at the grammar-school there are many, of course,
still alive, by whom he is well remembered;[14] and the general
impression they retain of him is, that he was a lively, warm-hearted,
and high-spirited boy--passionate and resentful, but affectionate and
companionable with his schoolfellows--to a remarkable degree venturous
and fearless, and (as one of them significantly expressed it) "always
more ready to give a blow than take one." Among many anecdotes
illustrative of this spirit, it is related that once, in returning
home from school, he fell in with a boy who had on some former
occasion insulted him, but had then got off unpunished--little Byron,
however, at the time, promising to "pay him off" whenever they should
meet again. Accordingly, on this second encounter, though there were
some other boys to take his opponent's part, he succeeded in
inflicting upon him a hearty beating. On his return home, breathless,
the servant enquired what he had been about, and was answered by him
with a mixture of rage and humour, that he had been paying a debt, by
beating a boy according to promise; for that he was a Byron, and would
never belie his motto, "_Trust Byron_."
He was, indeed, much more anxious to distinguish himself among his
school-fellows by prowess in all sports[15] and exercises, than by
advancement in learning. Though quick, when he could be persuaded to
attend, or had any study that pleased him, he was in general very low
in the class, nor seemed ambitious of being promoted any higher. It is
the custom, it seems, in this seminary, to invert, now and then, the
order of the class, so as to make the highest and lowest boys change
places,--with a view, no doubt, of piquing the ambition of both. On
these occasions, and only these, Byron was sometimes at the head, and
the master, to banter him, would say, "Now, George, man, let me see
how soon you'll be at the foot again."[16]
During this period, his mother and he made, occasionally, visits among
their friends, passing some time at Fetteresso, the seat of his
godfather, Colonel Duff, (where the child's delight with a humorous
old butler, named Ernest Fidler, is still remembered,) and also at
Banff, where some near connections of Mrs. Byron resided.
In the summer of the year 1796, after an attack of scarlet-fever, he
was removed by his mother for change of air into the Highlands; and it
was either at this time, or in the following year, that they took up
their residence at a farm-house in the neighbourhood of Ballater, a
favourite summer resort for health and gaiety, about forty miles up
the Dee from Aberdeen. Though this house, where they still show with
much pride the bed in which young Byron slept, has become naturally a
place of pilgrimage for the worshippers of genius, neither its own
appearance, nor that of the small bleak valley, in which it stands, is
at all worthy of being associated with the memory of a poet. Within a
short distance of it, however, all those features of wildness and
beauty, which mark the course of the Dee through the Highlands, may be
commanded. Here the dark summit of Lachin-y-gair stood towering before
the eyes of the future bard; and the verses in which, not many years
afterwards, he commemorated this sublime object, show that, young as
he was, at the time, its "frowning glories" were not unnoticed by
him.[17]
Ah, there my young footsteps in infancy wandered,
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;
On chieftains long perish'd my memory ponder'd
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade.
I sought not my home till the day's dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar-star;
For Fancy was cheer'd by traditional story,
Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch-na-gar.
To the wildness and grandeur of the scenes, among which his childhood
was passed, it is not unusual to trace the first awakening of his
poetic talent. But it may be questioned whether this faculty was ever
so produced. That the charm of scenery, which derives its chief power
from fancy and association, should be much felt at an age when fancy
is yet hardly awake, and associations but few, can with difficulty,
even making every allowance for the prematurity of genius, be
conceived. The light which the poet sees around the forms of nature is
not so much in the objects themselves as in the eye that contemplates
them; and Imagination must first be able to lend a glory to such
scenes, before she can derive inspiration _from_ them. As materials,
indeed, for the poetic faculty, when developed, to work upon, these
impressions of the new and wonderful retained from childhood, and
retained with all the vividness of recollection which belongs to
genius, may form, it is true, the purest and most precious part of
that aliment, with which the memory of the poet feeds his imagination.
But still, it is the newly-awakened power within him that is the
source of the charm;--it is the force of fancy alone that, acting upon
his recollections, impregnates, as it were, all the past with poesy.
In this respect, such impressions of natural scenery as Lord Byron
received in his childhood must be classed with the various other
remembrances which that period leaves behind--of its innocence, its
sports, its first hopes and affections--all of them reminiscences
which the poet afterwards converts to his use, but which no more
_make_ the poet than--to apply an illustration of Byron's own--the
honey can be said to make the bee that treasures it.
When it happens--as was the case with Lord Byron in Greece--that the
same peculiar features of nature, over which Memory has shed this
reflective charm, are reproduced before the eyes under new and
inspiring circumstances, and with all the accessories which an
imagination, in its full vigour and wealth, can lend them, then,
indeed, do both the past and present combine to make the enchantment
complete; and never was there a heart more borne away by this
confluence of feelings than that of Byron. In a poem, written about a
year or two before his death,[18] he traces all his enjoyment of
mountain scenery to the impressions received during his residence in
the Highlands; and even attributes the pleasure which he experienced
in gazing upon Ida and Parnassus, far less to classic remembrances,
than to those fond and deep-felt associations by which they brought
back the memory of his boyhood and Lachin-y-gair.
He who first met the Highland's swelling blue,
Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.
Long have I roam'd through lands which are not mine,
Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine,
Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep
Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep:
But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all
Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall;
The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy,
Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount,
And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount.
In a note appended to this passage, we find him falling into that sort
of anachronism in the history of his own feelings, which I have above
adverted to as not uncommon, and referring to childhood itself that
love of mountain prospects, which was but the after result of his
imaginative recollections of that period.
"From this period" (the time of his residence in the Highlands) "I
date my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect,
a few years afterwards in England, of the only thing I had long seen,
even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I
returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon at
sunset, with a sensation which I cannot describe." His love of
solitary rambles, and his taste for exploring in all directions, led
him not unfrequently so far, as to excite serious apprehensions for
his safety. While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home
unperceived;--sometimes he would find his way to the sea-side; and
once, after a long and anxious search, they found the adventurous
little rover struggling in a sort of morass or marsh, from which he
was unable to extricate himself.
In the course of one of his summer excursions up Dee-side, he had an
opportunity of seeing still more of the wild beauties of the Highlands
than even the neighbourhood of their residence at Ballatrech afforded,
--having been taken by his mother through the romantic passes that
lead to Invercauld, and as far up as the small waterfall, called the
Linn of Dee. Here his love of adventure had nearly cost him his life.
As he was scrambling along a declivity that overhung the fall, some
heather caught his lame foot, and he fell. Already he was rolling
downward, when the attendant luckily caught hold of him, and was but
just in time to save him from being killed. It was about this period,
when he was not quite eight years old, that a feeling partaking more
of the nature of love than it is easy to believe possible in so young
a child, took, according to his own account, entire possession of his
thoughts, and showed how early, in this passion, as in most others,
the sensibilities of his nature were awakened.[19] The name of the
object of this attachment was Mary Duff; and the following passage
from a Journal, kept by him in 1813, will show how freshly, after an
interval of seventeen years, all the circumstances of this early love
still lived in his memory:--
"I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd
that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an
age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the
word. And the effect!--My mother used always to rally me about this
childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen,
she told me one day, 'Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh,
from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to
a Mr. Co^e.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or
account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into
convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that after I grew better,
she generally avoided the subject--to _me_--and contented herself with
telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had
never seen her since her mother's faux-pas at Aberdeen had been the
cause of her removal to her grandmother's at Banff; we were both the
merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that
period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses,
her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my
mother's maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet
me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for
myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the
happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children's apartment, at their
house not far from the Plain-stones at Aberdeen, while her lesser
sister Helen played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love, in
our way.
"How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it originate?
I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my
misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt
if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing
of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke--it
nearly choked me--to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and
almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my
existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will
puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the
_recollection_ (_not_ the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as
ever. I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of it or me? or
remember her pitying sister Helen for not having an admirer too? How
very pretty is the perfect image of her in my memory--her brown, dark
hair, and hazel eyes; her very dress! I should be quite grieved to see
_her now_; the reality, however beautiful, would destroy, or at least
confuse, the features of the lovely Peri which then existed in her,
and still lives in my imagination, at the distance of more than
sixteen years. I am now twenty-five and odd months....
"I think my mother told the circumstances (on my hearing of her
marriage) to the Parkynses, and certainly to the Pigot family, and
probably mentioned it in her answer to Miss A., who was well
acquainted with my childish _penchant_, and had sent the news on
purpose for _me_,--and thanks to her!
"Next to the beginning, the conclusion has often occupied my
reflections, in the way of investigation. That the facts are thus,
others know as well as I, and my memory yet tells me so, in more than
a whisper. But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign
any cause for this precocity of affection."
Though the chance of his succession to the title of his ancestors was
for some time altogether uncertain--there being, so late as the year
1794, a grandson of the fifth lord still alive--his mother had, from
his very birth, cherished a strong persuasion that he was destined not
only to be a lord, but "a great man." One of the circumstances on
which she founded this belief was, singularly enough, his
lameness;--for what reason it is difficult to conceive, except that,
possibly (having a mind of the most superstitious cast), she had
consulted on the subject some village fortune-teller, who, to ennoble
this infirmity in her eyes, had linked the future destiny of the child
with it.
By the death of the grandson of the old lord at Corsica in 1794, the
only claimant, that had hitherto stood between little George and the
immediate succession to the peerage, was removed; and the increased
importance which this event conferred upon them was felt not only by
Mrs. Byron, but by the young future Baron of Newstead himself. In the
winter of 1797, his mother having chanced, one day, to read part of a
speech spoken in the House of Commons, a friend who was present said
to the boy, "We shall have the pleasure, some time or other, of
reading your speeches in the House of Commons."--"I hope not," was his
answer: "if you read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of
Lords."
The title, of which he thus early anticipated the enjoyment, devolved
to him but too soon. Had he been left to struggle on for ten years
longer, as plain George Byron, there can be little doubt that his
character would have been, in many respects, the better for it. In the
following year his grand-uncle, the fifth Lord Byron, died at Newstead
Abbey, having passed the latter years of his strange life in a state
of austere and almost savage seclusion. It is said, that the day after
little Byron's accession to the title, he ran up to his mother and
asked her, "whether she perceived any difference in him since he had
been made a lord, as he perceived none himself:"--a quick and natural
thought; but the child little knew what a total and talismanic change
had been wrought in all his future relations with society, by the
simple addition of that word before his name. That the event, as a
crisis in his life, affected him, even at that time, may be collected
from the agitation which he is said to have manifested on the
important morning, when his name was first called out in school with
the title of "Dominus" prefixed to it. Unable to give utterance to the
usual answer "adsum," he stood silent amid the general stare of his
school-fellows, and, at last, burst into tears.
The cloud, which, to a certain degree, undeservedly, his unfortunate
affray with Mr. Chaworth had thrown upon the character of the late
Lord Byron, was deepened and confirmed by what it, in a great measure,
produced,--the eccentric and unsocial course of life to which he
afterwards betook himself. Of his cruelty to Lady Byron, before her
separation from him, the most exaggerated stories are still current in
the neighbourhood; and it is even believed that, in one of his fits of
fury, he flung her into the pond at Newstead. On another occasion, it
is said, having shot his coachman for some disobedience of orders, he
threw the corpse into the carriage to his lady, and, mounting the box,
drove off himself. These stories are, no doubt, as gross fictions as
some of those of which his illustrious successor was afterwards made
the victim; and a female servant of the old lord, still alive, in
contradicting both tales as scandalous fabrications, supposes the
first to have had its origin in the following circumstance:--A young
lady, of the name of Booth, who was on a visit at Newstead, being one
evening with a party who were diverting themselves in front of the
abbey, Lord Byron by accident pushed her into the basin which receives
the cascades; and out of this little incident, as my informant very
plausibly conjectures, the tale of his attempting to drown Lady Byron
may have been fabricated.
After his lady had separated from him, the entire seclusion in which
he lived gave full scope to the inventive faculties of his neighbours.
There was no deed, however dark or desperate, that the village gossips
were not ready to impute to him; and two grim images of satyrs, which
stood in his gloomy garden, were, by the fears of those who had caught
a glimpse of them, dignified by the name of "the old lord's devils."
He was known always to go armed; and it is related that, on some
particular occasion, when his neighbour, the late Sir John Warren, was
admitted to dine with him, there was a case of pistols placed, as if
forming a customary part of the dinner service, on the table.
During his latter years, the only companions of his solitude--besides
that colony of crickets, which he is said to have amused himself with
rearing and feeding[20]--were old Murray, afterwards the favourite
servant of his successor, and the female domestic, whose authority I
have just quoted, and who, from the station she was suspected of being
promoted to by her noble master, received generally through the
neighbourhood the appellation of "Lady Betty."
Though living in this sordid and solitary style, he was frequently, as
it appears, much distressed for money; and one of the most serious of
the injuries inflicted by him upon the property was his sale of the
family estate of Rochdale in Lancashire, of which the mineral produce
was accounted very valuable. He well knew, it is said, at the time of
the sale, his inability to make out a legal title; nor is it supposed
that the purchasers themselves were unacquainted with the defect of
the conveyance. But they contemplated, and, it seems, actually did
realise, an indemnity from any pecuniary loss, before they could, in
the ordinary course of events, be dispossessed of the property. During
the young lord's minority, proceedings were instituted for the
recovery of this estate, and as the reader will learn hereafter with
success.
At Newstead, both the mansion and the grounds around it were suffered
to fall helplessly into decay; and among the few monuments of either
care or expenditure which their lord left behind, were some masses of
rockwork, on which much cost had been thrown away, and a few
castellated buildings on the banks of the lake and in the woods. The
forts upon the lake were designed to give a naval appearance to its
waters, and frequently, in his more social days, he used to amuse
himself with sham fights,--his vessels attacking the forts, and being
cannonaded by them in return. The largest of these vessels had been
built for him at some seaport on the eastern coast, and, being
conveyed on wheels over the Forest to Newstead, was supposed to have
fulfilled one of the prophecies of Mother Shipton, which declared that
"when a ship laden with _ling_ should cross over Sherwood Forest, the
Newstead estate would pass from the Byron family." In Nottinghamshire,
"ling" is the term used for _heather_; and, in order to bear out
Mother Shipton and spite the old lord, the country people, it is said,
ran along by the side of the vessel, heaping it with heather all the
way.
This eccentric peer, it is evident, cared but little about the fate of
his descendants. With his young heir in Scotland he held no
communication whatever; and if at any time he happened to mention him,
which but rarely occurred, it was never under any other designation
than that of "the little boy who lives at Aberdeen."
On the death of his grand-uncle, Lord Byron having become a ward of
chancery, the Earl of Carlisle, who was in some degree connected with
the family, being the son of the deceased lord's sister, was appointed
his guardian; and in the autumn of 1798, Mrs. Byron and her son,
attended by their faithful Mary Gray, left Aberdeen for Newstead.
Previously to their departure, the furniture of the humble lodgings
which they had occupied was, with the exception of the plate and
linen, which Mrs. Byron took with her, sold, and the whole sum that
the effects of the mother of the Lord of Newstead yielded was 74_l._
17_s_. 7_d_.
From the early age at which Byron was taken to Scotland, as well as
from the circumstance of his mother being a native of that country, he
had every reason to consider himself--as, indeed, he boasts in Don
Juan--"half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one." We have already
seen how warmly he preserved through life his recollection of the
mountain scenery in which he was brought up; and in the passage of Don
Juan, to which I have just referred, his allusion to the romantic
bridge of Don, and to other localities of Aberdeen, shows an equal
fidelity and fondness of retrospect:--
As Auld Lang Syne brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I _then dreamt_, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring;--floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine;
I care not--'tis a glimpse of "Auld Lang Syne."
He adds in a note, "The Brig of Don, near the 'auld town' of Aberdeen,
with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream, is in my memory as
yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote the awful
proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a
childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side.
The saying, as recollected by me, was this, but I have never heard or
seen it since I was nine years of age:--
"'Brig of Balgounie, _black_'s your wa',
Wi' a wife's _ae son_, and a mear's ae foal,
Down ye shall fa'.'"[21]
To meet with an Aberdonian was, at all times, a delight to him; and
when the late Mr. Scott, who was a native of Aberdeen, paid him a
visit at Venice in the year 1819, in talking of the haunts of his
childhood, one of the places he particularly mentioned was
Wallace-nook, a spot where there is a rude statue of the Scottish
chief still standing. From first to last, indeed, these recollections
of the country of his youth never forsook him. In his early voyage
into Greece, not only the shapes of the mountains, but the kilts and
hardy forms of the Albanese,--all, as he says, "carried him back to
Morven;" and, in his last fatal expedition, the dress which he himself
chiefly wore at Cephalonia was a tartan jacket.
Cordial, however, and deep as were the impressions which he retained
of Scotland, he would sometimes in this, as in all his other amiable
feelings, endeavour perversely to belie his own better nature; and,
when under the excitement of anger or ridicule, persuade not only
others, but even himself, that the whole current of his feelings ran
directly otherwise. The abuse with which, in his anger against the
Edinburgh Review, he overwhelmed every thing Scotch, is an instance of
this temporary triumph of wilfulness; and, at any time, the least
association of ridicule with the country or its inhabitants was
sufficient, for the moment, to put all his sentiment to flight. A
friend of his once described to me the half playful rage, into which
she saw him thrown, one day, by a heedless girl, who remarked that she
thought he had a little of the Scotch accent. "Good God, I hope not!"
he exclaimed. "I'm sure I haven't. I would rather the whole d----d
country was sunk in the sea--I the Scotch accent!"
To such sallies, however, whether in writing or conversation, but
little weight is to be allowed,--particularly, in comparison with
those strong testimonies which he has left on record of his fondness
for his early home; and while, on his side, this feeling so indelibly
existed, there is, on the part of the people of Aberdeen, who consider
him as almost their fellow-townsman, a correspondent warmth of
affection for his memory and name. The various houses where he resided
in his youth are pointed out to the traveller; to have seen him but
once is a recollection boasted of with pride; and the Brig of Don,
beautiful in itself, is invested, by his mere mention of it, with an
additional charm. Two or three years since, the sum of five pounds was
offered to a person in Aberdeen for a letter which he had in his
possession, written by Captain Byron a few days before his death; and,
among the memorials of the young poet, which are treasured up by
individuals of that place, there is one which it would have not a
little amused himself to hear of, being no less characteristic a relic
than an old china saucer, out of which he had bitten a large piece, in
a fit of passion, when a child.
It was in the summer of 1798, as I have already said, that Lord Byron,
then in his eleventh year, left Scotland with his mother and nurse, to
take possession of the ancient seat of his ancestors. In one of his
latest letters, referring to this journey, he says, "I recollect Loch
Leven as it were but yesterday--I saw it in my way to England in
1798." They had already arrived at the Newstead toll-bar, and saw the
woods of the Abbey stretching out to receive them, when Mrs. Byron,
affecting to be ignorant of the place, asked the woman of the
toll-house--to whom that seat belonged? She was told that the owner of
it, Lord Byron, had been some months dead. "And who is the next heir?"
asked the proud and happy mother. "They say," answered the woman, "it
is a little boy who lives at Aberdeen."--"And this is he, bless him!"
exclaimed the nurse, no longer able to contain herself, and turning to
kiss with delight the young lord who was seated on her lap.
Even under the most favourable circumstances, such an early elevation
to rank would be but too likely to have a dangerous influence on the
character; and the guidance under which young Byron entered upon his
new station was, of all others, the least likely to lead him safely
through its perils and temptations. His mother, without judgment or
self-command, alternately spoiled him by indulgence, and irritated,
or--what was still worse--amused him by her violence. That strong
sense of the ridiculous, for which he was afterwards so remarkable,
and which showed itself thus early, got the better even of his fear of
her; and when Mrs. Byron, who was a short and corpulent person, and
rolled considerably in her gait, would, in a rage, endeavour to catch
him, for the purpose of inflicting punishment, the young urchin, proud
of being able to out-strip her, notwithstanding his lameness, would
run round the room, laughing like a little Puck, and mocking at all
her menaces. In a few anecdotes of his early life which he related in
his "Memoranda," though the name of his mother was never mentioned but
with respect, it was not difficult to perceive that the recollections
she had left behind--at least, those that had made the deepest
impression--were of a painful nature. One of the most striking
passages, indeed, in the few pages of that Memoir which related to his
early days, was 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." As all that he had felt strongly
through life was, in some shape or other, reproduced in his poetry, it
was not likely that an expression such as this should fail of being
recorded. Accordingly we find, in the opening of his drama, "The
Deformed Transformed,"
_Bertha_. Out, hunchback!
_Arnold_. I was born so, mother!
It may be questioned, indeed, whether that whole drama was not
indebted for its origin to this single recollection.
While such was the character of the person under whose immediate eye
his youth was passed, the counteraction which a kind and watchful
guardian might have opposed to such example and influence was almost
wholly lost to him. Connected but remotely with the family, and never
having had any opportunity of knowing the boy, it was with much
reluctance that Lord Carlisle originally undertook the trust; nor can
we wonder that, when his duties as a guardian brought him acquainted
with Mrs. Byron, he should be deterred from interfering more than was
absolutely necessary for the child by his fear of coming into
collision with the violence and caprice of the mother.
Had even the character which the last lord left behind been
sufficiently popular to pique his young successor into an emulation of
his good name, such a salutary rivalry of the dead would have supplied
the place of living examples; and there is no mind in which such an
ambition would have been more likely to spring up than that of Byron.
But unluckily, as we have seen, this was not the case; and not only
was so fair a stimulus to good conduct wanting, but a rivalry of a
very different nature substituted in its place. The strange anecdotes
told of the last lord by the country people, among whom his fierce
and solitary habits had procured for him a sort of fearful renown,
were of a nature livelily to arrest the fancy of the young poet, and
even to waken in his mind a sort of boyish admiration for
singularities which he found thus elevated into matters of wonder and
record. By some it has been even supposed that in these stories of his
eccentric relative his imagination found the first dark outlines of
that ideal character, which he afterwards embodied in so many
different shapes, and ennobled by his genius. But however this may be,
it is at least far from improbable that, destitute as he was of other
and better models, the peculiarities of his immediate predecessor
should, in a considerable degree, have influenced his fancy and
tastes. One habit, which he seems early to have derived from this
spirit of imitation, and which he retained through life, was that of
constantly having arms of some description about or near him--it being
his practice, when quite a boy, to carry, at all times, small loaded
pistols in his waistcoat pockets. The affray, indeed, of the late lord
with Mr. Chaworth had, at a very early age, by connecting duelling in
his mind with the name of his race, led him to turn his attention to
this mode of arbitrament; and the mortification which he had, for some
time, to endure at school, from insults, as he imagined, hazarded on
the presumption of his physical inferiority, found consolation in the
thought that a day would yet arrive when the law of the pistol would
place him on a level with the strongest.
On their arrival from Scotland, Mrs. Byron, with the hope of having
his lameness removed, placed her son under the care of a person, who
professed the cure of such cases, at Nottingham. The name of this man,
who appears to have been a mere empirical pretender, was Lavender; and
the manner in which he is said to have proceeded was by first rubbing
the foot over, for a considerable time, with handsful of oil, and then
twisting the limb forcibly round, and screwing it up in a wooden
machine. That the boy might not lose ground in his education during
this interval, he received lessons in Latin from a respectable
schoolmaster, Mr. Rogers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero with
him, and represents his proficiency to have been, for his age,
considerable. He was often, during his lessons, in violent pain, from
the torturing position in which his foot was kept; and Mr. Rogers one
day said to him, "It makes me uncomfortable, my Lord, to see you
sitting there in such pain as I _know_ you must be suffering."--"Never
mind, Mr. Rogers," answered the boy; "you shall not see any signs of
it in _me_."
This gentleman, who speaks with the most affectionate remembrance of
his pupil, mentions several instances of the gaiety of spirit with
which he used to take revenge on his tormentor, Lavender, by exposing
and laughing at his pompous ignorance. Among other tricks, he one day
scribbled down on a sheet of paper all the letters of the alphabet,
put together at random, but in the form of words and sentences, and,
placing them before this all-pretending person, asked him gravely
what language it was. The quack, unwilling to own his ignorance,
answered confidently, "Italian,"--to the infinite delight, as it may
be supposed, of the little satirist in embryo, who burst into a loud,
triumphant laugh at the success of the trap which he had thus laid for
imposture.
With that mindfulness towards all who had been about him in his youth,
which was so distinguishing a trait in his character, he, many years
after, when in the neighbourhood of Nottingham, sent a message, full
of kindness, to his old instructor, and bid the bearer of it tell him,
that, beginning from a certain line in Virgil which he mentioned, he
could recite twenty verses on, which he well remembered having read
with this gentleman, when suffering all the time the most dreadful
pain.
It was about this period, according to his nurse, May Gray, that the
first symptom of any tendency towards rhyming showed itself in him;
and the occasion which she represented as having given rise to this
childish effort was as follows:--An elderly lady, who was in the habit
of visiting his mother, had made use of some expression that very much
affronted him; and these slights, his nurse said, he generally
resented violently and implacably. The old lady had some curious
notions respecting the soul, which, she imagined, took its flight to
the moon after death, as a preliminary essay before it proceeded
further. One day, after a repetition, it is supposed, of her original
insult to the boy, he appeared before his nurse in a violent rage.
"Well, my little hero," she asked, "what's the matter with you now?"
Upon which the child answered, that "this old woman had put him in a
most terrible passion--that he could not bear the sight of her," &c.
&c.--and then broke out into the following doggerel, which he repeated
over and over, as if delighted with the vent he had found for his
rage:--
In Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green,
As curst 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.
It is possible that these rhymes may have been caught up at
second-hand; and he himself, as will presently be seen, dated his
"first dash into poetry," as he calls it, a year later:--but the
anecdote altogether, as containing some early dawnings of character,
appeared to me worth preserving.
The small income of Mrs. Byron received at this time the
addition--most seasonable, no doubt, though on what grounds accorded,
I know not--of a pension on the Civil List, of 300_l._ a year. The
following is a copy of the King's warrant for the grant:--(Signed)
"GEORGE R.
"WHEREAS we are graciously pleased to grant unto Catharine
Gordon Byron, widow, an annuity of 300_l._, to commence from
5th July, 1799, and to continue during pleasure: our will
and pleasure is, that, by virtue of our general letters of
Privy Seal, bearing date 5th November, 1760, you do issue
and pay out of our treasure, or revenue in the receipt of
the Exchequer, applicable to the uses of our civil
government, unto the said Catharine Gordon Byron, widow, or
her assignees, the said annuity, to commence from 5th July,
1799, and to be paid quarterly, or otherwise, as the same
shall become due, and to continue during our pleasure; and
for so doing this shall be your warrant. Given at our Court
of St. James's, 2d October, 1799, 39th year of our reign.
"By His Majesty's command,
(Signed) "W. PITT.
"S. DOUGLAS.
"EDW^D. ROBERTS, Dep. Cler^us. Pellium."
Finding but little benefit from the Nottingham practitioner, Mrs.
Byron, in the summer of the year 1799, thought it right to remove her
boy to London, where, at the suggestion of Lord Carlisle, he was put
under the care of Dr. Baillie. It being an object, too, to place him
at some quiet school, where the means adopted for the cure of his
infirmity might be more easily attended to, the establishment of the
late Dr. Glennie, at Dulwich, was chosen for that purpose; and as it
was thought advisable that he should have a separate apartment to
sleep in, Dr. Glennie had a bed put up for him in his own study. Mrs.
Byron, who had remained a short time behind him at Newstead, on her
arrival in town took a house upon Sloane Terrace; and, under the
direction of Dr. Baillie, one of the Messrs. Sheldrake[22] was
employed to construct an instrument for the purpose of straightening
the limb of the child. Moderation in all athletic exercises was, of
course, prescribed; but Dr. Glennie found it by no means easy to
enforce compliance with this rule, as, though sufficiently quiet when
along with him in his study, no sooner was the boy released for play,
than he showed as much ambition to excel in all exercises as the most
robust youth of the school;--"an ambition," adds Dr. Glennie, in the
communication with which he favoured me a short time before his death,
"which I have remarked to prevail in general in young persons
labouring under similar defects of nature."[23]
Having been instructed in the elements of Latin grammar according to
the mode of teaching adopted at Aberdeen, the young student had now
unluckily to retrace his steps, and was, as is too often the case,
retarded in his studies and perplexed in his recollections, by the
necessity of toiling through the rudiments again in one of the forms
prescribed by the English schools. "I found him enter upon his tasks,"
says Dr. Glennie, "with alacrity and success. He was playful,
good-humoured, and beloved by his companions. His reading in history
and poetry was far beyond the usual standard of his age, and in my
study he found many books open to him, both to please his taste and
gratify his curiosity; among others, a set of our poets from Chaucer
to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had more than once
perused from beginning to end. He showed at this age an intimate
acquaintance with the historical parts of the Holy Scriptures, upon
which he seemed delighted to converse with me, especially after our
religious exercises of a Sunday evening; when he would reason upon the
facts contained in the Sacred Volume with every appearance of belief
in the divine truths which they unfold. That the impressions," adds
the writer, "thus imbibed in his boyhood, had, notwithstanding the
irregularities of his after life, sunk deep into his mind, will
appear, I think, to every impartial reader of his works in general;
and I never have been able to divest myself of the persuasion that, in
the strange aberrations which so unfortunately marked his subsequent
career, he must have found it difficult to violate the better
principles early instilled into him."
It should have been mentioned, among the traits which I have recorded
of his still earlier years, that, according to the character given of
him by his first nurse's husband, he was, when a mere child,
"particularly inquisitive and puzzling about religion."
It was not long before Dr. Glennie began to discover--what instructors
of youth must too often experience--that the parent was a much more
difficult subject to deal with than the child. Though professing
entire acquiescence in the representations of this gentleman, as to
the propriety of leaving her son to pursue his studies without
interruption, Mrs. Byron had neither sense nor self-denial enough to
act up to these professions; but, in spite of the remonstrances of Dr.
Glennie, and the injunctions of Lord Carlisle, continued to interfere
with and thwart the progress of the boy's education in every way that
a fond, wrong-headed, and self-willed mother could devise. In vain was
it stated to her that, in all the elemental parts of learning which
are requisite for a youth destined to a great public school, young
Byron was much behind other youths of his age, and that, to retrieve
this deficiency, the undivided application of his whole time would be
necessary. Though appearing to be sensible of the truth of these
suggestions, she not the less embarrassed and obstructed the teacher
in his task. Not content with the interval between Saturday and
Monday, which, contrary to Dr. Glennie's wish, the boy generally
passed at Sloane Terrace, she would frequently keep him at home a week
beyond this time, and, still further to add to the distraction of such
interruptions, collected around him a numerous circle of young
acquaintances, without exercising, as may be supposed, much
discrimination in her choice. "How, indeed, could she?" asks Dr.
Glennie--"Mrs. Byron was a total stranger to English society and
English manners; with an exterior far from prepossessing, an
understanding where nature had not been more bountiful, a mind almost
wholly without cultivation, and the peculiarities of northern
opinions, northern habits, and northern accent, I trust I do no great
prejudice to the memory of my countrywoman, if I say Mrs. Byron was
not a Madame de Lambert, endowed with powers to retrieve the fortune,
and form the character and manners, of a young nobleman, her son."
The interposition of Lord Carlisle, to whose authority it was found
necessary to appeal, had more than once given a check to these
disturbing indulgences. Sanctioned by such support, Dr. Glennie even
ventured to oppose himself to the privilege, so often abused, of the
usual visits on a Saturday; and the scenes which he had to encounter
on each new case of refusal were such as would have wearied out the
patience of any less zealous and conscientious schoolmaster. Mrs.
Byron, whose paroxysms of passion were not, like those of her son,
"silent rages," would, on all these occasions, break out into such
audible fits of temper as it was impossible to keep from reaching the
ears of the scholars and the servants; and Dr. Glennie had, one day,
the pain of overhearing a school-fellow of his noble pupil say to him,
"Byron, your mother is a fool;" to which the other answered gloomily,
"I know it." In consequence of all this violence and impracticability
of temper, Lord Carlisle at length ceased to have any intercourse with
the mother of his ward; and on a further application from the
instructor, for the exertion of his influence, said, "I can have
nothing more to do with Mrs. Byron,--you must now manage her as you
can."
Among the books that lay accessible to the boys in Dr. Glennie's study
was a pamphlet written by the brother of one of his most intimate
friends, entitled, "Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno on the
coast of Arracan, in the year 1795." The writer had been the second
officer of the ship, and the account which he had sent home to his
friends of the sufferings of himself and his fellow-passengers had
appeared to them so touching and strange, that they determined to
publish it. The pamphlet attracted but little, it seems, of public
attention, but among the young students of Dulwich Grove it was a
favourite study; and the impression which it left on the retentive
mind of Byron may have had some share, perhaps, in suggesting that
curious research through all the various Accounts of Shipwrecks upon
record, by which he prepared himself to depict with such power a scene
of the same description in Don Juan. The following affecting incident,
mentioned by the author of this pamphlet, has been adopted, it will be
seen, with but little change either of phrase or circumstance, by the
poet:--
"Of those who were not immediately near me I knew little, unless by
their cries. Some struggled hard, and died in great agony; but it was
not always those whose strength was most impaired that died the
easiest, though, in some cases, it might have been so. I particularly
remember the following instances. Mr. Wade's servant, a stout and
healthy boy, died early and almost without a groan; while another of
the same age, but of a less promising appearance, held out much
longer. The fate of these unfortunate boys differed also in another
respect highly deserving of notice. Their fathers were both in the
fore-top when the lads were taken ill. The father of Mr. Wade's boy
hearing of his son's illness, answered with indifference, 'that he
could do nothing for him,' and left him to his fate. The other, when
the accounts reached him, hurried down, and watching for a favourable
moment, crawled on all fours along the weather gunwale to his son, who
was in the mizen rigging. By that time, only three or four planks of
the quarter deck remained, just over the weather-quarter gallery; and
to this spot the unhappy man led his son, making him fast to the rail
to prevent his being washed away. Whenever the boy was seized with a
fit of retching, the father lifted him up and wiped the foam from his
lips; and, if a shower came, he made him open his mouth to receive the
drops, or gently squeezed them into it from a rag. In this affecting
situation both remained four or five days, till the boy expired. The
unfortunate parent, as if unwilling to believe the fact, then raised
the body, gazed wistfully at it, and, when he could no longer
entertain any doubt, watched it in silence till it was carried off by
the sea; then, wrapping himself in a piece of canvass, sunk down and
rose no more; though he must have lived two days longer, as we judged
from the quivering of his limbs, when a wave broke over him."[24]
It was probably during one of the vacations of this year, that the
boyish love for his young cousin, Miss Parker, to which he attributes
the glory of having first inspired him with poetry, took possession of
his fancy. "My first dash into poetry (he says) was as early as 1800.
It was the ebullition of a passion for my first cousin, Margaret
Parker (daughter and grand-daughter of the two Admirals Parker), one
of the most beautiful of evanescent beings. I have long forgotten the
verses, but it would be difficult for me to forget her--her dark
eyes--her long eye-lashes--her completely Greek cast of face and
figure! I was then about twelve--she rather older, perhaps a year. She
died about a year or two afterwards, in consequence of a fall, which
injured her spine, and induced consumption. Her sister Augusta (by
some thought still more beautiful) died of the same malady; and it
was, indeed, in attending her, that Margaret met with the accident
which occasioned her own death. My sister told me, that when she went
to see her, shortly before her death, upon accidentally mentioning my
name, Margaret coloured through the paleness of mortality to the eyes,
to the great astonishment of my sister, who (residing with her
grandmother, Lady Holderness, and seeing but little of me, for family
reasons,) knew nothing of our attachment, nor could conceive why my
name should affect her at such a time. I knew nothing of her illness,
being at Harrow and in the country, till she was gone. Some years
after, I made an attempt at an elegy--a very dull one.[25]
"I do not recollect scarcely any thing 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.
"My passion had its usual effects upon me--I could not sleep--I could
not eat--I could not rest: and although I had reason to know that she
loved me, it was the texture of my life to think of the time which
must elapse before we could meet again, being usually about twelve
hours of separation! But I was a fool then, and am not much wiser
now."
He had been nearly two years under the tuition of Dr. Glennie, when
his mother, discontented at the slowness of his progress--though
being, herself, as we have seen, the principal cause of it--entreated
so urgently of Lord Carlisle to have him removed to a public school,
that her wish was at length acceded to; and "accordingly," says Dr.
Glennie, "to Harrow he went, as little prepared as it is natural to
suppose from two years of elementary instruction, thwarted by every
art that could estrange the mind of youth from preceptor, from school,
and from all serious study."
This gentleman saw but little of Lord Byron after he left his care;
but, from the manner in which both he and Mrs. Glennie spoke of their
early charge, it was evident that his subsequent career had been
watched by them with interest; that they had seen even his errors
through the softening medium of their first feeling towards him, and
had never, in his most irregular aberrations, lost the traces of those
fine qualities which they had loved and admired in him when a child.
Of the constancy, too, of this feeling, Dr. Glennie had to stand no
ordinary trial, having visited Geneva in 1817, soon after Lord Byron
had left it, when the private character of the poet was in the very
crisis of its unpopularity, and when, among those friends who knew
that Dr. Glennie had once been his tutor, it was made a frequent
subject of banter with this gentleman that he had not more strictly
disciplined his pupil, or, to use their own words, "made a better boy
of him."
About the time when young Byron was removed, for his education, to
London, his nurse May Gray left the service of Mrs. Byron, and
returned to her native country, where she died about three years
since. She had married respectably, and in one of her last illnesses
was attended professionally by Dr. Ewing of Aberdeen, who, having been
always an enthusiastic admirer of Lord Byron, was no less surprised
than delighted to find that the person tinder his care had for so many
years been an attendant on his favourite poet. With avidity, as may be
supposed, he noted down from the lips of his patient all the
particulars she could remember of his Lordship's early days; and it is
to the communications with which this gentleman has favoured me, that
I am indebted for many of the anecdotes of that period which I have
related.
As a mark of gratitude for her attention to him, Byron had, in parting
with May Gray, presented her with his watch,--the first of which he
had ever been possessor. This watch the faithful nurse preserved
fondly through life, and, when she died, it was given by her husband
to Dr. Ewing, by whom, as a relic of genius, it is equally valued. The
affectionate boy had also presented her with a full-length miniature
of himself, which was painted by Kay of Edinburgh, in the year 1795,
and which represents him standing with a bow and arrows in his hand,
and a profusion of hair falling over his shoulders. This curious
little drawing has likewise passed into the possession of Dr. Ewing.
The same thoughtful gratitude was evinced by Byron towards the sister
of this woman, his first nurse, to whom he wrote some years after he
left Scotland, in the most cordial terms, making enquiries of her
welfare, and informing her, with much joy, that he had at last got his
foot so far restored as to be able to put on a common boot,--"an event
for which he had long anxiously wished, and which he was sure would
give her great pleasure."
In the summer of the year 1801 he accompanied his mother to
Cheltenham, and the account which he himself gives of his sensations
at that period[26] shows at what an early age those feelings that lead
to poetry had unfolded themselves in his heart. A boy, gazing with
emotion on the hills at sunset, because they remind him of the
mountains among which he passed his childhood, is already, in heart
and imagination, a poet. It was during their stay at Cheltenham that a
fortune-teller, whom his mother consulted, pronounced a prediction
concerning him which, for some time, left a strong impression on his
mind. Mrs. Byron had, it seems, in her first visit to this person,
(who, if I mistake not, was the celebrated fortune-teller, Mrs.
Williams,) endeavoured to pass herself off as a maiden lady. The
sibyl, however, was not so easily deceived;--she pronounced her wise
consulter to be not only a married woman, but the mother of a son who
was lame, and to whom, among other events which she read in the stars,
it was predestined 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. About two years afterwards he himself
mentioned these particulars to the person from whom I heard the
story, and said that the thought of the first part of the prophecy
very often occurred to him. The latter part, however, seems to have
been the _nearer_ guess of the two.
To a shy disposition, such as Byron's was in his youth--and such as,
to a certain degree, it continued all his life--the transition from a
quiet establishment, like that of Dulwich Grove, to the bustle of a
great public school was sufficiently trying. Accordingly, we find from
his own account, that, for the first year and a half, he "hated
Harrow." The activity, however, and sociableness of his nature soon
conquered this repugnance; and, from being, as he himself says, "a
most unpopular boy," he rose at length to be a leader in all the
sports, schemes, and mischief of the school.
For a general notion of his dispositions and capacities at this
period, we could not have recourse to a more trust-worthy or valuable
authority than that of the Rev. Dr. Drury, who was at this time head
master of the school, and to whom Lord Byron has left on record a
tribute of affection and respect, which, like the reverential regard
of Dryden for Dr. Busby, will long associate together honourably the
names of the poet and the master. From this venerable scholar I have
received the following brief, but important statement of the
impressions which his early intercourse with the young noble left upon
him:--
"Mr. Hanson, Lord Byron's solicitor, consigned him to my care at the
age of 13-1/2, with remarks, that his education had been neglected;
that he was ill prepared for a public school, but that he thought
there was a _cleverness_ about him. After his departure I took my
young disciple into my study, and endeavoured to bring him forward by
enquiries as to his former amusements, employments, and associates,
but with little or no effect;--and I soon found that a wild mountain
colt had been submitted to my management. But there was mind in his
eye. In the first place, it was necessary to attach him to an elder
boy, in order to familiarise him with the objects before him, and with
some parts of the system in which he was to move. But the information
he received from his conductor gave him no pleasure, when he heard of
the advances of some in the school, much younger than himself, and
conceived by his own deficiency that he should be degraded, and
humbled, by being placed below them. This I discovered, and having
committed him to the care of one of the masters, as his tutor, I
assured him he should not be placed till, by diligence, he might rank
with those of his own age. He was pleased with this assurance, and
felt himself on easier terms with his associates;--for a degree of
shyness hung about him for some time. His manner and temper soon
convinced me, that he might be led by a silken string to a point,
rather than by a cable;--on that principle I acted. After some
continuance at Harrow, and when the powers of his mind had begun to
expand, the late Lord Carlisle, his relation, desired to see me in
town;--I waited on his Lordship. His object was to inform me of Lord
Byron's expectations of property when he came of age, which he
represented as contracted, and to enquire respecting his abilities. On
the former circumstance I made no remark; as to the latter, I replied,
'He has talents, my Lord, which will _add lustre to his rank_.'
'Indeed!!!' said his Lordship, with a degree of surprise, that,
according to my reeling, did not express in it all the satisfaction I
expected.
"The circumstance to which you allude, as to his declamatory powers,
was as follows. The upper part of the school composed declamations,
which, after a revisal by the tutors, were submitted to the master: to
him the authors repeated them, that they might be improved in manner
and action, before their public delivery. I certainly was much pleased
with Lord Byron's attitude, gesture, and delivery, as well as with his
composition. All who spoke on that day adhered, as usual, to the
letter of their composition, as, in the earlier part of his delivery,
did Lord Byron. But to my surprise he suddenly diverged from the
written composition, with a boldness and rapidity sufficient to alarm
me, lest he should fail in memory as to the conclusion. There was no
failure:--he came round to the close of his composition without
discovering any impediment and irregularity on the whole. I questioned
him, why he had altered his declamation? He declared he had made no
alteration, and did not know, in speaking, that he had deviated from
it one letter. I believed him; and from a knowledge of his temperament
am convinced, that, fully impressed with the sense and substance of
the subject, he was hurried on to expressions and colourings more
striking than what his pen had expressed."
In communicating to me these recollections of his illustrious pupil,
Dr. Drury has added a circumstance which shows how strongly, even in
all the pride of his fame, that awe with which he had once regarded
the opinions of his old master still hung around the poet's sensitive
mind:--
"After my retreat from Harrow, I received from him two very
affectionate letters. In my occasional visits subsequently to London,
when he had fascinated the public with his productions, I demanded of
him; why, as in _duty bound_, he had sent none to me? 'Because,' said
he, 'you are the only man I never wish to read them:'--but, in a few
moments, he added--'What do you think of the Corsair?'"
I shall now lay before the reader such notices of his school-life as I
find scattered through the various note-books he has left behind.
Coming, as they do, from his own pen, it is needless to add, that they
afford the liveliest and best records of this period that can be
furnished.
"Till I was eighteen years old (odd as it may seem) I had never read a
review. But while at Harrow, my general information was so great on
modern topics as to induce a suspicion that I could only collect so
much information from _Reviews_, because I was never _seen_ reading,
but always idle, and in mischief, or at play. The truth is, that I
read eating, read in bed, read when no one else read, and had read all
sorts of reading since I was five years old, and yet never _met_ with
a Review, which is the only reason I know of why I should not have
read them. But it is true; for I remember when Hunter and Curzon, in
1804, told me this opinion at Harrow, I made them laugh by my
ludicrous astonishment in asking them '_What is_ a Review?' To be
sure, they were then less common. In three years more, I was better
acquainted with that same; but the first I ever read was in 1806-7.
"At school I was (as I have said) remarked for the extent and
readiness of my _general_ information; but in all other respects idle,
capable of great sudden exertions, (such as thirty or forty Greek
hexa-meters, of course with such prosody as it pleased God,) but of
few continuous drudgeries. My qualities were much more oratorical and
martial than poetical, and Dr. Drury, my grand patron, (our head
master,) had a great notion that I should turn out an orator, from my
fluency, my turbulence, my voice, my copiousness of declamation, and
my action.[27] I remember that my first declamation astonished him
into some unwonted (for he was economical of such) and sudden
compliments, before the declaimers at our first rehearsal. My first
Harrow verses, (that is, English, as exercises,) a translation of a
chorus from the Prometheus of Æschylus, were received by him but
coolly. No one had the least notion that I should subside into poesy.
"Peel, the orator and statesman, ('that was, or is, or is to be,') was
my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove (a
public-school phrase). We were on good terms, but his brother was my
intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel, amongst us
all, masters and scholars--and he has not disappointed them. As a
scholar he was greatly my superior; as a declaimer and actor, I was
reckoned at least his equal; as a schoolboy, _out_ of school, I was
always _in_ scrapes, and _he never_; and _in school_, he _always_ knew
his lesson, and I rarely,--but when I knew it, I knew it nearly as
well. In general information, history, &c. &c., I think I was _his_
superior, as well as of most boys of my standing.
"The prodigy of our school-days was George Sinclair (son of Sir John);
he made exercises for half the school, (_literally_) verses at will,
and themes without it.... He was a friend of mine, and in the same
remove, and used at times to beg me to let him do my exercise,--a
request always most readily accorded upon a pinch, or when I wanted to
do something else, which was usually once an hour. On the other hand,
he was pacific and I savage; so I fought for him, or thrashed others
for him, or thrashed himself to make him thrash others when it was
necessary, as a point of honour and stature, that he should so
chastise;--or we talked politics, for he was a great politician, and
were very good friends. I have some of his letters, written to me
from school, still.[28]
"Clayton was another school-monster of learning, and talent, and hope;
but what has become of him I do not know. He was certainly a genius.
"My school-friendships were with _me passions_,[29] (for I was always
violent,) but I do not know that there is one which has endured (to be
sure some have been cut short by death) till now. That with Lord Clare
begun one of the earliest, and lasted longest--being only interrupted
by distance--that I know of. I never hear the word '_Clare_' without a
beating of the heart even _now_, and I write it with the feelings of
1803-4-5, ad infinitum."