"Newstead Abbey, Notts. October 7. 1808.
"Dear Madam,
"I have no beds for the H----s or any body else at present. The H----s
sleep at Mansfield. I do not know, that I resemble Jean Jacques
Rousseau. I have no ambition to be like so illustrious a madman--but
this I know, that I shall live in my own manner, and as much alone as
possible. When my rooms are ready I shall be glad to see you: at
present it would be improper and uncomfortable to both parties. You
can hardly object to my rendering my mansion habitable,
notwithstanding my departure for Persia in March (or May at farthest),
since _you_ will be _tenant_ till my return; and in case of any
accident (for I have already arranged my will to be drawn up the
moment I am twenty-one), I have taken care you shall have the house
and manor for _life_, besides a sufficient income. So you see my
improvements are not entirely selfish. As I have a friend here, we
will go to the Infirmary Ball on the 12th; we will drink tea with Mrs.
Byron at eight o'clock, and expect to see you at the ball. If that
lady will allow us a couple of rooms to dress in, we shall be highly
obliged:--if we are at the ball by ten or eleven it will be time
enough, and we shall return to Newstead about three or four. Adieu.
"Believe me yours very truly,
"BYRON."
The idea, entertained by Mrs. Byron, of a resemblance between her son
and Rousseau was founded chiefly, we may suppose, on those habits of
solitariness, in which he had even already shown a disposition to
follow that self-contemplative philosopher, and which, manifesting
themselves thus early, gained strength as he advanced in life. In one
of his Journals, to which I frequently have occasion to refer,[94] he
thus, in questioning the justice of this comparison between himself
and Rousseau, gives,--as usual, vividly,--some touches of his own
disposition and habitudes:--
"My mother, before I was twenty, would have it that I was like
Rousseau, and Madame de Staël used to say so too in 1813, and the
Edinburgh Review has something of the sort in its critique on the
fourth Canto of Childe Harold. I can't see any point of
resemblance:--he wrote prose, I verse: he was of the people; I of the
aristocracy:[95] he was a philosopher; I am none: he published his
first work at forty; I mine at eighteen: his first essay brought him
universal applause; mine the contrary: he married his housekeeper; I
could not keep house with my wife: he thought all the world in a plot
against him; my little world seems to think me in a plot against it,
if I may judge by their abuse in print and coterie: he liked botany; I
like flowers, herbs, and trees, but know nothing of their pedigrees:
he wrote music; I limit my knowledge of it to what I catch by _ear_--I
never could learn any thing by _study_, not even a _language_--it was
all by rote, and ear, and memory: he had a _bad_ memory; I _had_, at
least, an excellent one (ask Hodgson the poet--a good judge, for he
has an astonishing one): he wrote with hesitation and care; I with
rapidity, and rarely with pains: _he_ could never ride, nor swim, nor
'was cunning of fence;' _I_ am an excellent swimmer, a decent, though
not at all a dashing, rider, (having staved in a rib at eighteen, in
the course of scampering), and was sufficient of fence, particularly
of the Highland broadsword,--not a bad boxer, when I could keep my
temper, which was difficult, but which I strove to do ever since I
knocked down Mr. Purling, and put his knee-pan out (with the gloves
on), in Angelo's and Jackson's rooms in 1806, during the
sparring,--and I was, besides, a very fair cricketer,--one of the
Harrow eleven, when we played against Eton in 1805. Besides,
Rousseau's way of life, his country, his manners, his whole character,
were so very different, that I am at a loss to conceive how such a
comparison could have arisen, as it has done three several times, and
all in rather a remarkable manner. I forgot to say that _he_ was also
short-sighted, and that hitherto my eyes have been the contrary, to
such a degree that, in the largest theatre of Bologna, I distinguished
and read some busts and inscriptions, painted near the stage, from a
box so distant and so _darkly_ lighted, that none of the company
(composed of young and very bright-eyed people, some of them in the
same box,) could make out a letter, and thought it was a trick, though
I had never been in that theatre before.
"Altogether, I think myself justified in thinking the comparison not
well founded. I don't say this out of pique, for Rousseau was a great
man; and the thing, if true, were flattering enough;--but I have no
idea of being pleased with the chimera."
In another letter to his mother, dated some weeks after the preceding
one, he explains further his plans both with respect to Newstead and
his projected travels.