"Newstead Abbey, November 2. 1808.
"Dear Mother,
"If you please, we will forget the things you mention. I have no
desire to remember them. When my rooms are finished, I shall be happy
to see you; as I tell but the truth, you will not suspect me of
evasion. I am furnishing the house more for you than myself, and I
shall establish you in it before I sail for India, which I expect to
do in March, if nothing particularly obstructive occurs. I am now
fitting up the _green_ drawing-room; the red for a bed-room, and the
rooms over as sleeping-rooms. They will be soon completed;--at least I
hope so.
"I wish you would enquire of Major Watson (who is an old Indian) what
things will be necessary to provide for my voyage. I have already
procured a friend to write to the Arabic Professor at Cambridge, for
some information I am anxious to procure. I can easily get letters
from government to the ambassadors, consuls, &c., and also to the
governors at Calcutta and Madras. I shall place my property and my
will in the hands of trustees till my return, and I mean to appoint
you one. From H---- I have heard nothing--when I do, you shall have
the particulars.
"After all, you must own my project is not a bad one. If I do not
travel now, I never shall, and all men should one day or other. I have
at present no connections to keep me at home; no wife, or unprovided
sisters, brothers, &c. I shall take care of you, and when I return I
may possibly become a politician. A few years' knowledge of other
countries than our own will not incapacitate me for that part. If we
see no nation but our own, we do not give mankind a fair chance:--it
is from _experience_, not books, we ought to judge of them. There is
nothing like inspection, and trusting to our own senses.
"Yours," &c.
In the November of this year he lost his favourite dog,
Boatswain,--the poor animal having been seized with a fit of madness,
at the commencement of which so little aware was Lord Byron of the
nature of the malady, that he more than once, with his bare hand,
wiped away the slaver from the dog's lips during the paroxysms. In a
letter to his friend, Mr. Hodgson,[96] he thus announces this
event:--"Boatswain is dead!--he expired in a state of madness on the
18th, after suffering much, yet retaining all the gentleness of his
nature to the last, never attempting to do the least injury to any one
near him. I have now lost every thing except old Murray."
The monument raised by him to this dog,--the most memorable tribute of
the kind, since the Dog's Grave, of old, at Salamis,--is still a
conspicuous ornament of the gardens of Newstead. The misanthropic
verses engraved upon it may be found among his poems, and the
following is the inscription by which they are introduced:--
"Near this spot
Are deposited the Remains of one
Who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferocity,
And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices.
This Praise, which would be unmeaning Flattery
If inscribed over human ashes,
Is but a just tribute to the Memory of
BOATSWAIN, a Dog,
Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803,
And died at Newstead Abbey, November 18. 1808."
The poet, Pope, when about the same age as the writer of this
inscription, passed a similar eulogy on his dog,[97] at the expense of
human nature; adding, that "Histories are more full of examples of the
fidelity of dogs than of friends." In a still sadder and bitterer
spirit, Lord Byron writes of his favourite,
"To mark a friend's remains these stones arise; I never knew
but one, and here he lies."[98]
Melancholy, indeed, seems to have been gaining fast upon his mind at
this period. In another letter to Mr. Hodgson, he says,--"You know
laughing is the sign of a rational animal--so says Dr. Smollet. I
think so too, but unluckily my spirits don't always keep pace with my
opinions."
Old Murray, the servant whom he mentions, in a preceding extract, as
the only faithful follower now remaining to him, had long been in the
service of the former lord, and was regarded by the young poet with a
fondness of affection which it has seldom been the lot of age and
dependence to inspire. "I have more than once," says a gentleman who
was at this time a constant visiter at Newstead, "seen Lord Byron at
the dinner-table fill out a tumbler of Madeira, and hand it over his
shoulder to Joe Murray, who stood behind his chair, saying, with a
cordiality that brightened his whole countenance, 'Here, my old
fellow.'"
The unconcern with which he could sometimes allude to the defect in
his foot is manifest from another passage in one of these letters to
Mr. Hodgson. That gentleman having said jestingly that some of the
verses in the "Hours of Idleness" were calculated to make schoolboys
rebellious, Lord Byron answers--"If my songs have produced the
glorious effects you mention, I shall be a complete Tyrtæus;--though
I am sorry to say I resemble that interesting harper more in his
person than in his poesy." Sometimes, too, even an allusion to this
infirmity by others, when he could perceive that it was not
offensively intended, was borne by him with the most perfect good
humour. "I was once present," says the friend I have just mentioned,
"in a large and mixed company, when a vulgar person asked him
aloud--'Pray, my Lord, how is that foot of yours?'--'Thank you, sir,'
answered Lord Byron, with the utmost mildness--'much the same as
usual.'"
The following extract, relating to a reverend friend of his Lordship,
is from another of his letters to Mr. Hodgson, this year:--
"A few weeks ago I wrote to ----, to request he would receive the son
of a citizen of London, well known to me, as a pupil; the family
having been particularly polite during the short time I was with them
induced me to this application. Now, mark what follows, as somebody
sublimely saith. On this day arrives an epistle signed ----,
containing not the smallest reference to tuition or _in_tuition, but a
_pe_tition for Robert Gregson, of pugilistic notoriety, now in bondage
for certain paltry pounds sterling, and liable to take up his
everlasting abode in Banco Regis. Had the letter been from any of my
_lay_ acquaintance, or, in short, from any person but the gentleman
whose signature it bears, I should have marvelled not. If ---- is
serious, I congratulate pugilism on the acquisition of such a patron,
and shall be most happy to advance any sum necessary for the
liberation of the captive Gregson. But I certainly hope to be
certified from you, or some respectable housekeeper, of the fact,
before I write to ---- on the subject. When I say the _fact_, I mean
of the letter being written by ----, not having any doubt as to the
authenticity of the statement. The letter is now before me, and I keep
it for your perusal."
His time at Newstead during this autumn was principally occupied in
enlarging and preparing his Satire for the press; and with the view,
perhaps, of mellowing his own judgment of its merits, by keeping it
some time before his eyes in a printed form,[99] he had proofs taken
off from the manuscript by his former publisher at Newark. It is
somewhat remarkable, that, excited as he was by the attack of the
reviewers, and possessing, at all times, such rapid powers of
composition, he should have allowed so long an interval to elapse
between the aggression and the revenge. But the importance of his next
move in literature seems to have been fully appreciated by him. He saw
that his chances of future eminence now depended upon the effort he
was about to make, and therefore deliberately collected all his
energies for the spring. Among the preparatives by which he
disciplined his talent to the task was a deep study of the writings of
Pope; and I have no doubt that from this period may be dated the
enthusiastic admiration which he ever after cherished for this great
poet,--an admiration which at last extinguished in him, after one or
two trials, all hope of pre-eminence in the same track, and drove him
thenceforth to seek renown in fields more open to competition.
The misanthropic mood of mind into which he had fallen at this time,
from disappointed affections and thwarted hopes, made the office of
satirist but too congenial and welcome to his spirit. Yet it is
evident that this bitterness existed far more in his fancy than his
heart; and that the sort of relief he now found in making war upon the
world arose much less from the indiscriminate wounds he dealt around,
than from the new sense of power he became conscious of in dealing
them, and by which he more than recovered his former station in his
own esteem. In truth, the versatility and ease with which, as shall
presently be shown, he could, on the briefest consideration, shift
from praise to censure, and, sometimes, almost as rapidly, from
censure to praise, shows how fanciful and transient were the
impressions under which he, in many instances, pronounced his
judgments; and though it may in some degree deduct from the weight of
his eulogy, absolves him also from any great depth of malice in his
Satire.
His coming of age, in 1809, was celebrated at Newstead by such
festivities as his narrow means and society could furnish. Besides the
ritual roasting of an ox, there was a ball, it seems, given on the
occasion,--of which the only particular I could collect, from the old
domestic who mentioned it, was, that Mr. Hanson, the agent of her
lord, was among the dancers. Of Lord Byron's own method of
commemorating the day, I find the following curious record in a letter
written from Genoa in 1822:--"Did I ever tell you that the day I came
of age I dined on eggs and bacon and a bottle of ale?--For once in a
way they are my favourite dish and drinkable; but as neither of them
agree with me, I never use them but on great jubilees,--in four or
five years or so." The pecuniary supplies necessary towards his
outset, at this epoch, were procured from money-lenders at an
enormously usurious interest, the payment of which for a long time
continued to be a burden to him.
It was not till the beginning of this year that he took his
Satire,--in a state ready, as he thought, for publication,--to London.
Before, however, he had put the work to press, new food was unluckily
furnished to his spleen by the neglect with which he conceived himself
to have been treated by his guardian, Lord Carlisle. The relations
between this nobleman and his ward had, at no time, been of such a
nature as to afford opportunities for the cultivation of much
friendliness on either side; and to the temper and influence of Mrs.
Byron must mainly be attributed the blame of widening, if not of
producing, this estrangement between them. The coldness with which
Lord Carlisle had received the dedication of the young poet's first
volume was, as we have seen from one of the letters of the latter,
felt by him most deeply. He, however, allowed himself to be so far
governed by prudential considerations as not only to stifle this
displeasure, but even to introduce into his Satire, as originally
intended for the press, the following compliment to his guardian:--
"On one alone Apollo deigns to smile,
And crowns a new Roscommon in Carlisle."
The crown, however, thus generously awarded, did not long remain where
it had been placed. In the interval between the inditing of this
couplet and the delivery of the manuscript to the press, Lord Byron,
under the impression that it was customary for a young peer, on first
taking his seat, to have some friend to introduce him, wrote to remind
Lord Carlisle that he should be of age at the commencement of the
session. Instead, however, of the sort of answer which he expected, a
mere formal, and, as it appeared to him, cold reply, acquainting him
with the technical mode of proceeding on such occasions, was all that,
in return to this application, he received. Disposed as he had been,
by preceding circumstances, to suspect his noble guardian of no very
friendly inclinations towards him, this backwardness in proposing to
introduce him to the House (a ceremony, however, as it appears, by no
means necessary or even usual) was sufficient to rouse in his
sensitive mind a strong feeling of resentment. The indignation, thus
excited, found a vent, but too temptingly, at hand;--the laudatory
couplet I have just cited was instantly expunged, and his Satire went
forth charged with those vituperative verses against Lord Carlisle, of
which, gratifying as they must have been to his revenge at the moment,
he, not long after, with the placability so inherent in his generous
nature, repented.[100]
During the progress of his poem through the press, he increased its
length by more than a hundred lines; and made several alterations, one
or two of which may be mentioned, as illustrative of that prompt
susceptibility of new impressions and influences which rendered both
his judgment and feelings so variable. In the Satire, as it originally
stood, was the following couplet:--
"Though printers condescend the press to soil
With odes by Smythe, and epic songs by Hoyle."
Of the injustice of these lines (unjust, it is but fair to say, to
both the writers mentioned,) he, on the brink of publication,
repented; and,--as far, at least, as regarded one of the intended
victims,--adopted a tone directly opposite in his printed Satire,
where the name of Professor Smythe is mentioned honourably, as it
deserved, in conjunction with that of Mr. Hodgson, one of the poet's
most valued friends:--
"Oh dark asylum of a Vandal race!
At once the boast of learning and disgrace;
So sunk in dulness, and so lost in shame,
That Smythe and Hodgson scarce redeem thy fame."
In another instance we find him "changing his hand" with equal
facility and suddenness. The original manuscript of the Satire
contained this line,--
"I leave topography to coxcomb Gell;"
but having, while the work was printing, become acquainted with Sir
William Gell, he, without difficulty, by the change of a single
epithet, converted satire into eulogy, and the line now descends to
posterity thus:--
"I leave topography to _classic_ Gell."[101]
Among the passages added to the poem during its progress through the
press were those lines denouncing the licentiousness of the Opera.
"Then let Ausonia," &c. which the young satirist wrote one night,
after returning, brimful of morality, from the Opera, and sent them
early next morning to Mr. Dallas for insertion. The just and animated
tribute to Mr. Crabbe was also among the after-thoughts with which his
poem was adorned; nor can we doubt that both this, and the equally
merited eulogy on Mr. Rogers, were the disinterested and deliberate
result of the young poet's judgment, as he had never at that period
seen either of these distinguished persons, and the opinion he then
expressed of their genius remained unchanged through life. With the
author of the Pleasures of Memory he afterwards became intimate, but
with him, whom he had so well designated as "Nature's sternest
painter, yet the best," he was never lucky enough to form any
acquaintance;--though, as my venerated friend and neighbour, Mr.
Crabbe himself, tells me, they were once, without being aware of it,
in the same inn together for a day or two, and must have frequently
met, as they went in and out of the house, during the time.
Almost every second day, while the Satire was printing, Mr. Dallas,
who had undertaken to superintend it through the press, received fresh
matter, for the enrichment of its pages, from the author, whose mind,
once excited on any subject, knew no end to the outpourings of its
wealth. In one of his short notes to Mr. Dallas, he says, "Print soon,
or I shall overflow with rhyme;" and it was, in the same manner, in
all his subsequent publications,--as long, at least, as he remained
within reach of the printer,--that he continued thus to feed the
press, to the very last moment, with new and "thick-coming fancies,"
which the re-perusal of what he had already written suggested to him.
It would almost seem, indeed, from the extreme facility and rapidity
with which he produced some of his brightest passages during the
progress of his works through the press, that there was in the very
act of printing an excitement to his fancy, and that the rush of his
thoughts towards this outlet gave increased life and freshness to
their flow.
Among the passing events from which he now caught illustrations for
his poem was the melancholy death of Lord Falkland,--a gallant, but
dissipated naval officer, with whom the habits of his town life had
brought him acquainted, and who, about the beginning of March, was
killed in a duel by Mr. Powell. That this event affected Lord Byron
very deeply, the few touching sentences devoted to it in his Satire
prove. "On Sunday night (he says) I beheld Lord Falkland presiding at
his own table in all the honest pride of hospitality; on Wednesday
morning at three o'clock I saw stretched before me all that remained
of courage, feeling, and a host of passions." But it was not by words
only that he gave proof of sympathy on this occasion. The family of
the unfortunate nobleman were left behind in circumstances which
needed something more than the mere expression of compassion to
alleviate them; and Lord Byron, notwithstanding the pressure of his
own difficulties at the time, found means, seasonably and delicately,
to assist the widow and children of his friend. In the following
letter to Mrs. Byron, he mentions this among other matters of
interest,--and in a tone of unostentatious sensibility highly
honourable to him.