Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III

T >> Thomas Moore >> Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24

"But some are dead, and some are gone,
And some are scatter'd and alone,
And some are rebels on the hills[89]
That look along Epirus' valleys
Where Freedom still at moments rallies,
And pays in blood Oppression's ills:
And some are in a far countree,
And some all restlessly at home;
But never more, oh! never, we
Shall meet to revel and to roam.
But those hardy days flew cheerily;
And when they now fall drearily,
My thoughts, like swallows, skim the main
And bear my spirit back again
Over the earth, and through the air,
A wild bird, and a wanderer.
'Tis this that ever wakes my strain,
And oft, too oft, implores again
The few who may endure my lay,
To follow me so far away.

"Stranger--wilt thou follow now,
And sit with me on Acro-Corinth's brow?"

[Footnote 89: "The last tidings recently heard of Dervish (one of the
Arnaouts who followed me) state him to be in revolt upon the mountains,
at the head of some of the bands common in that country in times of
trouble."]

* * * * *

LETTER 232. TO MR. MOORE.

"January 5. 1816.

"I hope Mrs. M. is quite re-established. The little girl was born
on the 10th of December last; her name is Augusta _Ada_ (the second
a very antique family name,--I believe not used since the reign of
King John). She was, and is, very flourishing and fat, and reckoned
very large for her days--squalls and sucks incessantly. Are you
answered? Her mother is doing very well, and up again.

"I have now been married a year on the second of this
month--heigh-ho! I have seen nobody lately much worth noting,
except S * * and another general of the Gauls, once or twice at
dinners out of doors. S * * is a fine, foreign, villanous-looking,
intelligent, and very agreeable man; his compatriot is more of the
_petit-maitre_, and younger, but I should think not at all of the
same intellectual calibre with the Corsican--which S * *, you know,
is, and a cousin of Napoleon's.

"Are you never to be expected in town again? To be sure, there is
no one here of the 1500 fillers of hot-rooms, called the
fashionable world. My approaching papa-ship detained us for advice,
&c. &c. though I would as soon be here as any where else on this
side of the Straits of Gibraltar.

"I would gladly--or, rather, sorrowfully--comply with your request
of a dirge for the poor girl you mention.[90] But how can I write
on one I have never seen or known? Besides, you will do it much
better yourself. I could not write upon any thing, without some
personal experience and foundation; far less on a theme so
peculiar. Now, you have both in this case; and, if you had neither,
you have more imagination, and would never fail.

"This is but a dull scrawl, and I am but a dull fellow. Just at
present, I am absorbed in 500 contradictory contemplations, though
with but one object in view--which will probably end in nothing, as
most things we wish do. But never mind,--as somebody says, 'for the
blue sky bends over all.' I only could be glad, if it bent over me
where it is a little bluer; like the 'skyish top of blue Olympus,'
which, by the way, looked very white when I last saw it.

"Ever," &c.

[Footnote 90: I had mentioned to him, as a subject worthy of his best
powers of pathos, a melancholy event which had just occurred in my
neighbourhood, and to which I have myself made allusion in one of the
Sacred Melodies--"Weep not for her."]

* * * * *

On reading over the foregoing letter, I was much struck by the tone of
melancholy that pervaded it; and well knowing it to be the habit of the
writer's mind to seek relief, when under the pressure of any disquiet
or disgust, in that sense of freedom which told him that there were
homes for him elsewhere, I could perceive, I thought, in his
recollections of the "blue Olympus," some return of the restless and
roving spirit, which unhappiness or impatience always called up in his
mind. I had, indeed, at the time when he sent me those melancholy
verses, "There's not a joy this world can give," &c. felt some vague
apprehensions as to the mood into which his spirits then seemed to be
sinking, and, in acknowledging the receipt of the verses, thus tried to
banter him out of it:--"But why thus on your stool of melancholy again,
Master Stephen?--This will never do--it plays the deuce with all the
matter-of-fact duties of life, and you must bid adieu to it. Youth is
the only time when one can be melancholy with impunity. As life itself
grows sad and serious we have nothing for it but--to be as much as
possible the contrary."

My absence from London during the whole of this year had deprived me of
all opportunities of judging for myself how far the appearances of his
domestic state gave promise of happiness; nor had any rumours reached me
which at all inclined me to suspect that the course of his married life
hitherto exhibited less smoothness than such unions,--on the surface, at
least,--generally wear. The strong and affectionate terms in which, soon
after the marriage, he had, in some of the letters I have given,
declared his own happiness--a declaration which his known frankness left
me no room to question--had, in no small degree, tended to still those
apprehensions which my first view of the lot he had chosen for himself
awakened. I could not, however, but observe that these indications of a
contented heart soon ceased. His mention of the partner of his home
became more rare and formal, and there was observable, I thought,
through some of his letters a feeling of unquiet and weariness that
brought back all those gloomy anticipations with which I had, from the
first, regarded his fate. This last letter of his, in particular, struck
me as full of sad omen, and, in the course of my answer, I thus noticed
to him the impression it had made on me:--"And so you are a whole year
married!--

'It was last year I vow'd to thee
That fond impossibility.'

Do you know, my dear B., there was a something in your last letter--a
sort of unquiet mystery, as well as a want of your usual elasticity of
spirits--which has hung upon my mind unpleasantly ever since. I long to
be near you, that I might know how you really look and feel; for these
letters tell nothing, and one word, _a quattr'occhi_, is worth whole
reams of correspondence. But only _do_ tell me you are happier than that
letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied."

* * * * *

It was in a few weeks after this latter communication between us that
Lady Byron adopted the resolution of parting from him. She had left
London about the middle of January, on a visit to her father's house, in
Leicestershire, and Lord Byron was, in a short time after, to follow
her. They had parted in the utmost kindness,--she wrote him a letter,
full of playfulness and affection, on the road, and, immediately on her
arrival at Kirkby Mallory, her father wrote to acquaint Lord Byron that
she would return to him no more. At the time when he had to stand this
unexpected shock, his pecuniary embarrassments, which had been fast
gathering around him during the whole of the last year (there having
been no less than eight or nine executions in his house within that
period), had arrived at their utmost; and at a moment when, to use his
own strong expressions, he was "standing alone on his hearth, with his
household gods shivered around him," he was also doomed to receive the
startling intelligence that the wife who had just parted with him in
kindness, had parted with him--for ever.

About this time the following note was written:--

TO MR. ROGERS.

"February 8. 1816.

"Do not mistake me--I really returned your book for the reason
assigned, and no other. It is too good for so careless a fellow. I
have parted with all my own books, and positively won't deprive you
of so valuable 'a drop of that immortal man.'

"I shall be very glad to see you, if you like to call, though I am
at present contending with 'the slings and arrows of outrageous
fortune,' some of which have struck at me from a quarter whence I
did not indeed expect them--But, no matter, 'there is a world
elsewhere,' and I will cut my way through this as I can.

"If you write to Moore, will you tell him that I shall answer his
letter the moment I can muster time and spirits? Ever yours,

"BN."

* * * * *

The rumours of the separation did not reach me till more than a week
afterwards, when I immediately wrote to him thus:--"I am most anxious to
hear from you, though I doubt whether I ought to mention the subject on
which I am so anxious. If, however, what I heard last night, in a letter
from town, be true, you will know immediately what I allude to, and just
communicate as much or as little upon the subject as you think
proper;--only _something_ I should like to know, as soon as possible,
from yourself, in order to set my mind at rest with respect to the truth
or falsehood of the report." The following is his answer:--

LETTER 233. TO MR. MOORE.

"February 29. 1816.

"I have not answered your letter for a time; and, at present, the
reply to part of it might extend to such a length, that I shall
delay it till it can be made in person, and then I will shorten it
as much as I can.

"In the mean time, I am at war 'with all the world and his wife;'
or rather, 'all the world and _my_ wife' are at war with me, and
have not yet crushed me,--whatever they _may_ do. I don't know that
in the course of a hair-breadth existence I was ever, at home or
abroad, in a situation so completely uprooting of present pleasure,
or rational hope for the future, as this same. I say this, because
I think so, and feel it. But I shall not sink under it the more for
that mode of considering the question--I have made up my mind.

"By the way, however, you must not believe all you hear on the
subject; and don't attempt to defend me. If you succeeded in that,
it would be a mortal, or an immortal, offence--who can bear
refutation? I have but a very short answer for those whom it
concerns; and all the activity of myself and some vigorous friends
have not yet fixed on any tangible ground or personage, on which or
with whom I can discuss matters, in a summary way, with a fair
pretext;--though I nearly had _nailed one_ yesterday, but he evaded
by--what was judged by others--a satisfactory explanation. I speak
of _circulators_--against whom I have no enmity, though I must act
according to the common code of usage, when I hit upon those of the
serious order.

"Now for other matters--poesy, for instance. Leigh Hunt's poem is a
devilish good one--quaint, here and there, but with the substratum
of originality, and with poetry about it, that will stand the test.
I do not say this because he has inscribed it to me, which I am
sorry for, as I should otherwise have begged you to review it in
the Edinburgh.[91] It is really deserving of much praise, and a
favourable critique in the E.R. would but do it justice, and set it
up before the public eye where it ought to be.

"How are you? and where? I have not the most distant idea what I am
going to do myself, or with myself--or where--or what. I had, a few
weeks ago, some things to say that would have made you laugh; but
they tell me now that I must not laugh, and so I have been very
serious--and am.

"I have not been very well--with a _liver_ complaint--but am much
better within the last fortnight, though still under Iatrical
advice. I have latterly seen a little of * * * *

"I must go and dress to dine. My little girl is in the country,
and, they tell me, is a very fine child, and now nearly three
months old. Lady Noel (my mother-in-law, or, rather, _at_ law) is
at present overlooking it. Her daughter (Miss Milbanke that was)
is, I believe, in London with her father. A Mrs. C. (now a kind of
housekeeper and spy of Lady N.'s) who, in her better days, was a
washerwoman, is supposed to be--by the learned--very much the
occult cause of our late domestic discrepancies.

"In all this business, I am the sorriest for Sir Ralph. He and I
are equally punished, though _magis pares quam similes_ in our
affliction. Yet it is hard for both to suffer for the fault of one,
and so it is--I shall be separated from my wife; he will retain
his.

"Ever," &c.

[Footnote 91: My reply to this part of his letter was, I find, as
follows:--"With respect to Hunt's poem, though it is, I own, full of
beauties, and though I like himself sincerely, I really could not
undertake to praise it _seriously_. There is so much of the _quizzible_
in all he writes, that I never can put on the proper pathetic face in
reading him."]

* * * * *

In my reply to this letter, written a few days after, there is a passage
which (though containing an opinion it might have been more prudent,
perhaps, to conceal,) I feel myself called upon to extract on account of
the singularly generous avowal,--honourable alike to both the parties in
this unhappy affair,--which it was the means of drawing from Lord Byron.
The following are my words:--"I am much in the same state as yourself
with respect to the subject of your letter, my mind being so full of
things which I don't know how to write about, that _I_ too must defer
the greater part of them till we meet in May, when I shall put you
fairly on your trial for all crimes and misdemeanors. In the mean time,
you will not be at a loss for judges, nor executioners either, if they
could have their will. The world, in their generous ardour to take what
they call the weaker side, soon contrive to make it most formidably the
strongest. Most sincerely do I grieve at what has happened. It has upset
all my wishes and theories as to the influence of marriage on your life;
for, instead of bringing you, as I expected, into something like a
regular orbit, it has only cast you off again into infinite space, and
left you, I fear, in a far worse state than it found you. As to
defending you, the only person with whom I have yet attempted this task
is myself; and, considering the little I know upon the subject, (or
rather, perhaps, _owing_ to this cause,) I have hitherto done it with
very tolerable success. After all, your _choice_ was the misfortune. I
never liked,--but I'm here wandering into the [Greek: aporreta], and so
must change the subject for a far pleasanter one, your last new poems,
which," &c. &c.

The return of post brought me the following answer, which, while it
raises our admiration of the generous candour of the writer, but adds to
the sadness and strangeness of the whole transaction.

* * * * *

LETTER 234. TO MR. MOORE.

"March 8. 1816.

"I rejoice in your promotion as Chairman and Charitable Steward,
&c. &c. These be dignities which await only the virtuous. But then,
recollect you are _six_ and _thirty_, (I speak this enviously--not
of your age, but the 'honour--love--obedience--troops of friends,'
which accompany it,) and I have eight years good to run before I
arrive at such hoary perfection; by which time,--if I _am_ at
all[92],--it will probably be in a state of grace or progressing
merits.

"I must set you right in one point, however. The fault was
_not_--no, nor even the misfortune--in my 'choice' (unless in
_choosing at all_)--for I do not believe--and I must say it, in the
very dregs of all this bitter business--that there ever was a
better, or even a brighter, a kinder, or a more amiable and
agreeable being than Lady B. I never had, nor can have, any
reproach to make her, while with me. Where there is blame, it
belongs to myself, and, if I cannot redeem, I must bear it.

"Her nearest relatives are a * * * *--my circumstances have been
and are in a state of great confusion--my health has been a _good_
deal disordered, and my mind ill at ease for a considerable period.
Such are the causes (I do not name them as excuses) which have
frequently driven me into excess, and disqualified my temper for
comfort. Something also may be attributed to the strange and
desultory habits which, becoming my own master at an early age, and
scrambling about, over and through the world, may have induced. I
still, however, think that, if I had had a fair chance, by being
placed in even a tolerable situation, I might have gone on fairly.
But that seems hopeless,--and there is nothing more to be said. At
present--except my health, which is better (it is odd, but
agitation or contest of any kind gives a rebound to my spirits and
sets me up for the time)--I have to battle with all kinds of
unpleasantnesses, including private and pecuniary difficulties, &c.
&c.

"I believe I may have said this before to you, but I risk repeating
it. It is nothing to bear the _privations_ of adversity, or, more
properly, ill fortune; but my pride recoils from its _indignities_.
However, I have no quarrel with that same pride, which will, I
think, buckler me through every thing. If my heart could have been
broken, it would have been so years ago, and by events more
afflicting than these.

"I agree with you (to turn from this topic to our shop) that I
have written too much. The last things were, however, published
very reluctantly by me, and for reasons I will explain when we
meet. I know not why I have dwelt so much on the same scenes,
except that I find them fading, or _confusing_ (if such a word may
be) in my memory, in the midst of present turbulence and pressure,
and I felt anxious to stamp before the die was worn out. I now
break it. With those countries, and events connected with them, all
my really poetical feelings begin and end. Were I to try, I could
make nothing of any other subject, and that I have apparently
exhausted. 'Wo to him,' says Voltaire, 'who says all he could say
on any subject.' There are some on which, perhaps, I could have
said still more: but I leave them all, and too soon.

"Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year, which you
still have? I don't wish (like Mr. Fitzgerald, in the Morning Post)
to claim the character of 'Vates' in all its translations, but were
they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning, 'There's not a
joy the world can,' &c. &c., on which I rather pique myself as
being the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote.

"What a scrawl have I sent you! You say nothing of yourself, except
that you are a Lancasterian churchwarden, and an encourager of
mendicants. When are you out? and how is your family? My child is
very well and flourishing, I hear; but I must see also. I feel no
disposition to resign it to the contagion of its grandmother's
society, though I am unwilling to take it from the mother. It is
weaned, however, and something about it must be decided. Ever," &c.

[Footnote 92: This sad doubt,--"if I _am_ at all,"--becomes no less
singular than sad when we recollect that six and thirty was actually the
age when he ceased to "be," and at a moment, too, when (as even the
least friendly to him allow) he was in that state of "progressing
merits" which he here jestingly anticipates.]

* * * * *

Having already gone so far in laying open to my readers some of the
sentiments which I entertained, respecting Lord Byron's marriage, at a
time when, little foreseeing that I should ever become his biographer, I
was, of course, uninfluenced by the peculiar bias supposed to belong to
that task, it may still further, perhaps, be permitted me to extract
from my reply to the foregoing letter some sentences of explanation
which its contents seemed to me to require.

"I had certainly no right to say any thing about the unluckiness of your
choice, though I rejoice now that I did, as it has drawn from you a
tribute which, however unaccountable and mysterious it renders the whole
affair, is highly honourable to both parties. What I meant in hinting a
doubt with respect to the object of your selection did not imply the
least impeachment of that perfect amiableness which the world, I find,
by common consent, allows to her. I only feared that she might have been
too perfect--too _precisely_ excellent--too matter-of-fact a paragon for
you to coalesce with comfortably; and that a person whose perfection
hung in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened down by
some of 'those fair defects which best conciliate love,' would, by
appealing more dependently to your protection, have stood a much better
chance with your good nature. All these suppositions, however, I have
been led into by my intense anxiety to acquit you of any thing like a
capricious abandonment of such a woman[93]; and, totally in the dark as
I am with respect to all but the fact of your separation, you cannot
conceive the solicitude, the fearful solicitude, with which I look
forward to a history of the transaction from your own lips when we
meet,--a history in which I am sure of, at least, _one_ virtue--manly
candour."

[Footnote 93: It will be perceived from this that I was as yet
unacquainted with the true circumstances of the transaction.]

* * * * *

With respect to the causes that may be supposed to have led to this
separation, it seems needless, with the characters of both parties
before our eyes, to go in quest of any very remote or mysterious reasons
to account for it. I have already, in some observations on the general
character of men of genius, endeavoured to point out those
peculiarities, both in disposition and habitudes, by which, in the far
greater number of instances, they have been found unfitted for domestic
happiness. Of these defects, (which are, as it were, the shadow that
genius casts, and too generally, it is to be feared, in proportion to
its stature,) Lord Byron could not, of course, fail to have inherited
his share, in common with all the painfully-gifted class to which he
belonged. How thoroughly, with respect to one attribute of this
temperament which he possessed,--one, that "sicklies o'er" the face of
happiness itself,--he was understood by the person most interested in
observing him, will appear from the following anecdote, as related by
himself.[94]

"People have wondered at the melancholy which runs through my writings.
Others have wondered at my personal gaiety. But I recollect once, after
an hour in which I had been sincerely and particularly gay and rather
brilliant, in company, my wife replying to me when I said (upon her
remarking my high spirits), 'And yet, Bell, I have been called and
miscalled melancholy--you must have seen how falsely, frequently?'--'No,
Byron,' she answered, 'it is not so: at heart you are the most
melancholy of mankind; and often when apparently gayest.'"

To these faults and sources of faults inherent, in his own sensitive
nature, he added also many of those which a long indulgence of self-will
generates,--the least compatible, of all others, (if not softened down,
as they were in him, by good nature,) with that system of mutual
concession and sacrifice by which the balance of domestic peace is
maintained. When we look back, indeed, to the unbridled career, of which
this marriage was meant to be the goal,--to the rapid and restless
course in which his life had run along, like a burning train, through a
series of wanderings, adventures, successes, and passions, the fever of
all which was still upon him, when, with the same headlong recklessness,
he rushed into this marriage,--it can but little surprise us that, in
the space of one short year, he should not have been able to recover
all at once from his bewilderment, or to settle down into that tame
level of conduct which the close observers of his every action required.
As well might it be expected that a steed like his own Mazeppa's,

"Wild as the wild deer and untaught,
With spur and bridle undefiled--
'Twas but a day he had been caught,"

should stand still, when reined, without chafing or champing the bit.

Even had the new condition of life into which he passed been one of
prosperity and smoothness, some time, as well as tolerance, must still
have been allowed for the subsiding of so excited a spirit into rest.
But, on the contrary, his marriage (from the reputation, no doubt, of
the lady, as an heiress,) was, at once, a signal for all the arrears and
claims of a long-accumulating state of embarrassment to explode upon
him;--his door was almost daily beset by duns, and his house nine times
during that year in possession of bailiffs[95]; while, in addition to
these anxieties and--what he felt still more--indignities of poverty,
he had also the pain of fancying, whether rightly or wrongly, that the
eyes of enemies and spies were upon him, even under his own roof, and
that his every hasty word and look were interpreted in the most
perverting light.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24