"London, May 22. 1809.
"My dear ----,
"I must begin with giving you a few particulars of the singular place
which I have lately quitted.
"Newstead Abbey is situate 136 miles from London,--four on this side
Mansfield. It is so fine a piece of antiquity, that I should think
there must be a description, and, perhaps, a picture of it in Grose.
The ancestors of its present owner came into possession of it at the
time of the dissolution of the monasteries,--but the building itself
is of a much earlier date. Though sadly fallen to decay, it is still
completely an _abbey_, and most part of it is still standing in the
same state as when it was first built. There are two tiers of
cloisters, with a variety of cells and rooms about them, which, though
not inhabited, nor in an inhabitable state, might easily be made so;
and many of the original rooms, amongst which is a fine stone hall,
are still in use. Of the abbey church only one end remains; and the
old kitchen, with a long range of apartments, is reduced to a heap of
rubbish. Leading from the abbey to the modern part of the habitation
is a noble room seventy feet in length, and twenty-three in breadth;
but every part of the house displays neglect and decay, save those
which the present Lord has lately fitted up.
"The house and gardens are entirely surrounded by a wall with
battlements. In front is a large lake, bordered here and there with
castellated buildings, the chief of which stands on an eminence at the
further extremity of it. Fancy all this surrounded with bleak and
barren hills, with scarce a tree to be seen for miles, except a
solitary clump or two, and you will have some idea of Newstead. For
the late Lord being at enmity with his son, to whom the estate was
secured by entail, resolved, out of spite to the same, that the estate
should descend to him in as miserable a plight as he could possibly
reduce it to; for which cause, he took no care of the mansion, and
fell to lopping of every tree he could lay his hands on, so furiously,
that he reduced immense tracts of woodland country to the desolate
state I have just described. However, his son died before him, so that
all his rage was thrown away.
"So much for the place, concerning which I have thrown together these
few particulars, meaning my account to be, like the place itself,
without any order or connection. But if the place itself appear rather
strange to you, the ways of the inhabitants will not appear much less
so. Ascend, then, with me the hall steps, that I may introduce you to
my Lord and his visitants. But have a care how you proceed; be mindful
to go there in broad daylight, and with your eyes about you. For,
should you make any blunder,--should you go to the right of the hall
steps, you are laid hold of by a bear; and should you go to the left,
your case is still worse, for you run full against a wolf!--Nor, when
you have attained the door, is your danger over; for the hall being
decayed, and therefore standing in need of repair, a bevy of inmates
are very probably banging at one end of it with their pistols; so that
if you enter without giving loud notice of your approach, you have
only escaped the wolf and the bear to expire by the pistol-shots of
the merry monks of Newstead.
"Our party consisted of Lord Byron and four others, and was, now and then,
increased by the presence of a neighbouring parson. As for our way of
living, the order of the day was generally this:--for breakfast we had no
set hour, but each suited his own convenience,--every thing remaining on
the table till the whole party had done; though had one wished to
breakfast at the early hour of ten, one would have been rather lucky to
find any of the servants up. Our average hour of rising was one. I, who
generally got up between eleven and twelve, was always,--even when an
invalid,--the first of the party, and was esteemed a prodigy of early
rising. It was frequently past two before the breakfast party broke up.
Then, for the amusements of the morning, there was reading, fencing,
single-stick, or shuttle-cock, in the great room; practising with pistols
in the hall; walking--riding--cricket--sailing on the lake, playing with
the bear, or teasing the wolf. Between seven and eight we dined; and our
evening lasted from that time till one, two, or three in the morning. The
evening diversions may be easily conceived.
"I must not omit the custom of handing round, after dinner, on the
removal of the cloth, a human skull filled with burgundy. After
revelling on choice viands, and the finest wines of France, we
adjourned to tea, where we amused ourselves with reading, or improving
conversation,--each, according to his fancy,--and, after sandwiches,
&c. retired to rest. A set of monkish dresses, which had been
provided, with all the proper apparatus of crosses, beads, tonsures,
&c. often gave a variety to our appearance, and to our pursuits.
"You may easily imagine how chagrined I was at being ill nearly the
first half of the time I was there. But I was led into a very
different reflection from that of Dr. Swift, who left Pope's house
without ceremony, and afterwards informed him, by letter, that it was
impossible for two sick friends to live together; for I found my
shivering and invalid frame so perpetually annoyed by the thoughtless
and tumultuous health of every one about me, that I heartily wished
every soul in the house to be as ill as myself.
"The journey back I performed on foot, together with another of the
guests. We walked about twenty-five miles a day; but were a week on
the road, from being detained by the rain.
"So here I close my account of an expedition which has somewhat
extended my knowledge of this country. And where do you think I am
going next? To Constantinople!--at least, such an excursion has been
proposed to me. Lord B. and another friend of mine are going thither
next month, and have asked me to join the party; but it seems to be
but a wild scheme, and requires twice thinking upon.
"Addio, my dear I., yours very affectionately,
"C.S. MATTHEWS."
Having put the finishing hand to his new edition, he, without waiting
for the fresh honours that were in store for him, took leave of London
(whither he had returned) on the 11th of June, and, in about a
fortnight after, sailed for Lisbon.
Great as was the advance which his powers had made, under the
influence of that resentment from which he now drew his inspiration,
they were yet, even in his Satire, at an immeasurable distance from
the point to which they afterwards so triumphantly rose. It is,
indeed, remarkable that, essentially as his genius seemed connected
with, and, as it were, springing out of his character, the
developement of the one should so long have preceded the full maturity
of the resources of the other. By her very early and rapid expansion
of his sensibilities, Nature had given him notice of what she destined
him for, long before he understood the call; and those materials of
poetry with which his own fervid temperament abounded were but by slow
degrees, and after much self-meditation, revealed to him. In his
Satire, though vigorous, there is but little foretaste of the wonders
that followed it. His spirit was stirred, but he had not yet looked
down into its depths, nor does even his bitterness taste of the bottom
of the heart, like those sarcasms which he afterwards flung in the
face of mankind. Still less had the other countless feelings and
passions, with which his soul had been long labouring, found an organ
worthy of them;--the gloom, the grandeur, the tenderness of his
nature, all were left without a voice, till his mighty genius, at
last, awakened in its strength.
In stooping, as he did, to write after established models, as well in
the Satire as in his still earlier poems, he showed how little he had
yet explored his own original resources, or found out those
distinctive marks by which he was to be known through all times. But,
bold and energetic as was his general character, he was, in a
remarkable degree, diffident in his intellectual powers. The
consciousness of what he could achieve was but by degrees forced upon
him, and the discovery of so rich a mine of genius in his soul came
with no less surprise on himself than on the world. It was from the
same slowness of self-appreciation that, afterwards, in the full flow
of his fame, he long doubted, as we shall see, his own aptitude for
works of wit and humour,--till the happy experiment of "Beppo" at once
dissipated this distrust, and opened a new region of triumph to his
versatile and boundless powers.
But, however far short of himself his first writings must be
considered, there is in his Satire a liveliness of thought, and still
more a vigour and courage, which, concurring with the justice of his
cause and the sympathies of the public on his side, could not fail to
attach instant celebrity to his name. Notwithstanding, too, the
general boldness and recklessness of his tone, there were occasionally
mingled with this defiance some allusions to his own fate and
character, whose affecting earnestness seemed to answer for their
truth, and which were of a nature strongly to awaken curiosity as well
as interest. One or two of these passages, as illustrative of the
state of his mind at this period, I shall here extract. The loose and
unfenced state in which his youth was left to grow wild upon the world
is thus touchingly alluded to:--
"Ev'n I, least thinking of a thoughtless throng,
Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong,
Freed at that age when Reason's shield is lost
To fight my course through Passion's countless host,
Whom every path of Pleasure's flowery way
Has lured in turn, and all have led astray[105]--
Ev'n I must raise my voice, ev'n I must feel
Such scenes, such men destroy the public weal:
Although some kind, censorious friend will say,
'What art thou better, meddling fool,[106] than they?'
And every brother Rake will smile to see
That miracle, a Moralist, in me."
But the passage in which, hastily thrown off as it is, we find the
strongest traces of that wounded feeling, which bleeds, as it were,
through all his subsequent writings, is the following:--
"The time hath been, when no harsh sound would fall
From lips that now may seem imbued with gall,
Nor fools nor follies tempt me to despise
The meanest thing that crawl'd beneath my eyes.
But now so callous grown, so changed from youth," &c.
Some of the causes that worked this change in his character have been
intimated in the course of the preceding pages. That there was no
tinge of bitterness in his natural disposition, we have abundant
testimony, besides his own, to prove. Though, as a child, occasionally
passionate and headstrong, his docility and kindness towards those who
were themselves kind, is acknowledged by all; and "playful" and
"affectionate" are invariably the epithets by which those who knew him
in his childhood convey their impression of his character.
Of all the qualities, indeed, of his nature, affectionateness seems
to have been the most ardent and most deep. A disposition, on his own
side, to form strong attachments, and a yearning desire after
affection in return, were the feeling and the want that formed the
dream and torment of his existence. We have seen with what passionate
enthusiasm he threw himself into his boyish friendships. The
all-absorbing and unsuccessful love that followed was, if I may so
say, the agony, without being the death, of this unsated desire, which
lived on through his life, and filled his poetry with the very soul of
tenderness, lent the colouring of its light to even those unworthy
ties which vanity or passion led him afterwards to form, and was the
last aspiration of his fervid spirit in those stanzas written but a
few months before his death:--
"'Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it has ceased to move;
Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!"
It is much, I own, to be questioned, whether, even under the most
favourable circumstances, a disposition such as I have here described
could have escaped ultimate disappointment, or found any where a
resting-place for its imaginings and desires. But, in the case of Lord
Byron, disappointment met him on the very threshold of life. His
mother, to whom his affections first, naturally with ardour, turned,
either repelled them rudely, or capriciously trifled with them. In
speaking of his early days to a friend at Genoa, a short time before
his departure for Greece, he traced the first feelings of pain and
humiliation he had ever known to the coldness with which his mother
had received his caresses in infancy, and the frequent taunts on his
personal deformity with which she had wounded him.
The sympathy of a sister's love, of all the influences on the mind of a
youth the most softening, was also, in his early days, denied to him,--his
sister Augusta and he having seen but little of each other while young. A
vent through the calm channel of domestic affections might have brought
down the high current of his feelings to a level nearer that of the world
he had to traverse, and thus saved them from the tumultuous rapids and
falls to which this early elevation, in their after-course, exposed them.
In the dearth of all home-endearments, his heart had no other resource but
in those boyish friendships which he formed at school; and when these were
interrupted by his removal to Cambridge, he was again thrown back,
isolated, on his own restless desires. Then followed his ill-fated
attachment to Miss Chaworth, to which, more than to any other cause, he
himself attributed the desolating change then wrought in his disposition.
"I doubt sometimes (he says, in his 'Detached Thoughts,') whether,
after all, a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me; yet I
sometimes long for it. My earliest dreams (as most boys' dreams are)
were martial; but a little later they were all for _love_ and
retirement, till the hopeless attachment to M---- C---- began and
continued (though sedulously concealed) _very_ early in my teens; and
so upwards for a time. _This_ threw me out again 'alone on a wide,
wide sea.' In the year 1804 I recollect meeting my sister at General
Harcourt's, in Portland Place. I was then _one thing_, and _as_ she
had always till then found me. When we met again in 1805 (she told me
since) that my temper and disposition were so completely altered, that
I was hardly to be recognised. I was not then sensible of the change;
but I can believe it, and account for it."
I have already described his parting with Miss Chaworth previously to
her marriage. Once again, after that event, he saw her, and for the
last time,--being invited by Mr. Chaworth to dine at Annesley not long
before his departure from England. The few years that had elapsed
since their last meeting had made a considerable change in the
appearance and manners of the young poet. The fat, unformed schoolboy
was now a slender and graceful young man. Those emotions and passions
which at first heighten, and then destroy, beauty, had as yet produced
only their favourable effects on his features; and, though with but
little aid from the example of refined society, his manners had
subsided into that tone of gentleness and self-possession which more
than any thing marks the well-bred gentleman. Once only was the latter
of these qualities put to the trial, when the little daughter of his
fair hostess was brought into the room. At the sight of the child he
started involuntarily,--it was with the utmost difficulty he could
conceal his emotion; and to the sensations of that moment we are
indebted for those touching stanzas, "Well--thou art happy,"
&c.,[107] which appeared afterwards in a Miscellany published by one
of his friends, and are now to be found in the general collection of
his works. Under the influence of the same despondent passion, he
wrote two other poems at this period, from which, as they exist only
in the Miscellany I have just alluded to, and that collection has for
some time been out of print, a few stanzas may, not improperly, be
extracted here.
"THE FAREWELL--TO A LADY.[108]
"When man, expell'd from Eden's bowers,
A moment linger'd near the gate,
Each scene recall'd the vanish'd hours,
And bade him curse his future fate.
"But wandering on through distant climes,
He learnt to bear his load of grief;
Just gave a sigh to other times,
And found in busier scenes relief.
"Thus, lady,[109] must it be with me,
And I must view thy charms no more!
For, whilst I linger near to thee,
I sigh for all I knew before," &c. &c.
The other poem is, throughout, full of tenderness; but I shall give
only what appear to me the most striking stanzas.
"STANZAS TO ---- ON LEAVING ENGLAND.
"'Tis done--and shivering in the gale
The bark unfurls her snowy sail;
And whistling o'er the bending mast,
Loud sings on high the fresh'ning blast;
And I must from this land be gone,
Because I cannot love but one.
"As some lone bird, without a mate,
My weary heart is desolate;
I look around, and cannot trace
One friendly smile or welcome face,
And ev'n in crowds am still alone,
Because I cannot love but one.
"And I will cross the whitening foam,
And I will seek a foreign home;
Till I forget a false fair face,
I ne'er shall find a resting-place;
My own dark thoughts I cannot shun,
But ever love, and love but one.
"I go--but wheresoe'er I flee
There's not an eye will weep for me;
There's not a kind congenial heart,
Where I can claim the meanest part;
Nor thou, who hast my hopes undone,
Wilt sigh, although I love but one.
"To think of every early scene,
Of what we are, and what we've been,
Would whelm some softer hearts with woe--
But mine, alas! has stood the blow;
Yet still beats on as it begun,
And never truly loves but one.
"And who that dear loved one may be
Is not for vulgar eyes to see,
And why that early love was crost,
Thou know'st the best, I feel the most;
But few that dwell beneath the sun
Have loved so long, and loved but one.
"I've tried another's fetters, too,
With charms, perchance, as fair to view;
And I would fain have loved as well,
But some unconquerable spell
Forbade my bleeding breast to own
A kindred care for aught but one.
"'Twould soothe to take one lingering view,
And bless thee in my last adieu;
Yet wish I not those eyes to weep
For him that wanders o'er the deep;
His home, his hope, his youth, are gone,
Yet still he loves, and loves but one."[110]
While thus, in all the relations of the heart, his thirst after
affection was thwarted, in another instinct of his nature, not less
strong--the desire of eminence and distinction--he was, in an equal
degree, checked in his aspirings, and mortified. The inadequacy of his
means to his station was early a source of embarrassment and
humiliation to him; and those high, patrician notions of birth in
which he indulged but made the disparity between his fortune and his
rank the more galling. Ambition, however, soon whispered to him that
there were other and nobler ways to distinction. The eminence which
talent builds for itself might, one day, he proudly felt, be his own;
nor was it too sanguine to hope that, under the favour accorded
usually to youth, he might with impunity venture on his first steps to
fame. But here, as in every other object of his heart, disappointment
and mortification awaited him. Instead of experiencing the ordinary
forbearance, if not indulgence, with which young aspirants for fame
are received by their critics, he found himself instantly the victim
of such unmeasured severity as is not often dealt out even to veteran
offenders in literature; and, with a heart fresh from the trials of
disappointed love, saw those resources and consolations which he had
sought in the exercise of his intellectual strength also invaded.
While thus prematurely broken into the pains of life, a no less
darkening effect was produced upon him by too early an initiation into
its pleasures. That charm with which the fancy of youth invests an
untried world was, in his case, soon dissipated. His passions had, at
the very onset of their career, forestalled the future; and the blank
void that followed was by himself considered as one of the causes of
that melancholy, which now settled so deeply into his character.
"My passions" (he says, in his 'Detached Thoughts') "were developed very
early--so early that few would believe me if I were to state the period
and the facts which accompanied it. Perhaps this was one of the reasons
which caused the anticipated melancholy of my thoughts,--having
anticipated life. My earlier poems are the thoughts of one at least ten
years older than the age at which they were written,--I don't mean for
their solidity, but their experience. The two first Cantos of Childe
Harold were completed at twenty-two; and they are written as if by a man
older than I shall probably ever be."
Though the allusions in the first sentence of this extract have
reference to a much earlier period, they afford an opportunity of
remarking, that however dissipated may have been the life which he led
during the two or three years previous to his departure on his
travels, yet the notion caught up by many, from his own allusions, in
Childe Harold, to irregularities and orgies of which Newstead had been
the scene, is, like most other imputations against him, founded on his
own testimony, greatly exaggerated. He describes, it is well known,
the home of his poetical representative as a "monastic dome, condemned
to uses vile," and then adds,--
"Where Superstition once had made her den,
Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile."
Mr. Dallas, too, giving in to the same strain of exaggeration, says,
in speaking of the poet's preparations for his departure, "already
satiated with pleasure, and disgusted with those companions who have
no other resource, he had resolved on mastering his appetites;--he
broke up his harams." The truth, however, is, that the narrowness of
Lord Byron's means would alone have prevented such oriental luxuries.
The mode of his life at Newstead was simple and unexpensive. His
companions, though not averse to convivial indulgences, were of
habits and tastes too intellectual for mere vulgar debauchery; and,
with respect to the alleged "harams," it appears certain that one or
two suspected "_subintroductæ_" (as the ancient monks of the abbey
would have styled them), and those, too, among the ordinary menials of
the establishment, were all that even scandal itself could ever fix
upon to warrant such an assumption.
That gaming was among his follies at this period he himself tells us
in the journal I have just cited:--
"I have a notion (he says) that gamblers are as happy as many people,
being always _excited_. Women, wine, fame, the table,--even ambition,
_sate_ now and then; but every turn of the card and cast of the dice
keeps the gamester alive: besides, one can game ten times longer than
one can do any thing else. I was very fond of it when young, that is
to say, of hazard, for I hate all _card_ games,--even faro. When macco
(or whatever they spell it) was introduced, I gave up the whole thing,
for I loved and missed the _rattle_ and _dash_ of the box and dice,
and the glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck or bad luck, but
of _any luck at all_, as one had sometimes to throw _often_ to decide
at all. I have thrown as many as fourteen mains running, and carried
off all the cash upon the table occasionally; but I had no coolness,
or judgment, or calculation. It was the delight of the thing that
pleased me. Upon the whole, I left off in time, without being much a
winner or loser. Since one-and-twenty years of age I played but
little, and then never above a hundred, or two, or three."
To this, and other follies of the same period, he alludes in the
following note:--