Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III

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After passing a fortnight under the same roof with Lord Byron at
Secheron, Mr. and Mrs. Shelley removed to a small house on the
Mont-Blanc side of the Lake, within about ten minutes' walk of the villa
which their noble friend had taken, upon the high banks, called Belle
Rive, that rose immediately behind them. During the fortnight that Lord
Byron outstaid them at Secheron, though the weather had changed and was
become windy and cloudy, he every evening crossed the Lake, with
Polidori, to visit them; and "as he returned again (says my informant)
over the darkened waters, the wind, from far across, bore us his voice
singing your Tyrolese Song of Liberty, which I then first heard, and
which is to me inextricably linked with his remembrance."

In the mean time, Polidori had become jealous of the growing intimacy of
his noble patron with Shelley; and the plan which he now understood them
to have formed of making a tour of the Lake without him completed his
mortification. In the soreness of his feelings on this subject he
indulged in some intemperate remonstrances, which Lord Byron indignantly
resented; and the usual bounds of courtesy being passed on both sides,
the dismissal of Polidori appeared, even to himself, inevitable. With
this prospect, which he considered nothing less than ruin, before his
eyes, the poor young man was, it seems, on the point of committing that
fatal act which, two or three years afterwards, he actually did
perpetrate. Retiring to his own room, he had already drawn forth the
poison from his medicine chest, and was pausing to consider whether he
should write a letter before he took it, when Lord Byron (without,
however, the least suspicion of his intention) tapped at the door and
entered, with his hand held forth in sign of reconciliation. The sudden
revulsion was too much for poor Polidori, who burst into tears; and, in
relating all the circumstances of the occurrence afterwards, he declared
that nothing could exceed the gentle kindness of Lord Byron in soothing
his mind and restoring him to composure.

Soon after this the noble poet removed to Diodati. He had, on his first
coming to Geneva, with the good-natured view of introducing Polidori
into company, gone to several Genevese parties; but, this task
performed, he retired altogether from society till late in the summer,
when, as we have seen, he visited Copet. His means were at this time
very limited; and though he lived by no means parsimoniously, all
unnecessary expenses were avoided in his establishment. The young
physician had been, at first, a source of much expense to him, being in
the habit of hiring a carriage, at a louis a day (Lord Byron not then
keeping horses), to take him to his evening parties; and it was some
time before his noble patron had the courage to put this luxury down.

The liberty, indeed, which this young person allowed himself was, on
one occasion, the means of bringing an imputation upon the poet's
hospitality and good breeding, which, like every thing else, true or
false, tending to cast a shade upon his character, was for some time
circulated with the most industrious zeal. Without any authority from
the noble owner of the mansion, he took upon himself to invite some
Genevese gentlemen (M. Pictet, and, I believe, M. Bonstetten) to dine at
Diodati; and the punishment which Lord Byron thought it right to inflict
upon him for such freedom was, "as he had invited the guests, to leave
him also to entertain them." This step, though merely a consequence of
the physician's indiscretion, it was not difficult, of course, to
convert into a serious charge of caprice and rudeness against the host
himself.

By such repeated instances of thoughtlessness (to use no harsher term),
it is not wonderful that Lord Byron should at last be driven into a
feeling of distaste towards his medical companion, of whom he one day
remarked, that "he was exactly the kind of person to whom, if he fell
overboard, one would hold out a straw, to know if the adage be true that
drowning men catch at straws."

A few more anecdotes of this young man, while in the service of Lord
Byron, may, as throwing light upon the character of the latter, be not
inappropriately introduced. While the whole party were, one day, out
boating, Polidori, by some accident, in rowing, struck Lord Byron
violently on the knee-pan with his oar; and the latter, without
speaking, turned his face away to hide the pain. After a moment he
said, "Be so kind, Polidori, another time, to take more care, for you
hurt me very much."--"I am glad of it," answered the other; "I am glad
to see you can suffer pain." In a calm suppressed tone, Lord Byron
replied, "Let me advise you, Polidori, when you, another time, hurt any
one, not to express your satisfaction. People don't like to be told that
those who give them pain are glad of it; and they cannot always command
their anger. It was with some difficulty that I refrained from throwing
you into the water; and, but for Mrs. Shelley's presence, I should
probably have done some such rash thing." This was said without ill
temper, and the cloud soon passed away.

Another time, when the lady just mentioned was, after a shower of rain,
walking up the hill to Diodati, Lord Byron, who saw her from his balcony
where he was standing with Polidori, said to the latter, "Now, you who
wish to be gallant ought to jump down this small height, and offer your
arm." Polidori chose the easiest part of the declivity, and leaped;--but
the ground being wet, his foot slipped, and he sprained his ankle.[117]
Lord Byron instantly helped to carry him in and procure cold water for
the foot; and, after he was laid on the sofa, perceiving that he was
uneasy, went up stairs himself (an exertion which his lameness made
painful and disagreeable) to fetch a pillow for him. "Well, I did not
believe you had so much feeling," was Polidori's gracious remark,
which, it may be supposed, not a little clouded the noble poet's brow.

A dialogue which Lord Byron himself used to mention as having taken
place between them during their journey on the Rhine, is amusingly
characteristic of both the persons concerned. "After all," said the
physician, "what is there you can do that I cannot?"--"Why, since you
force me to say," answered the other, "I think there are three things I
can do which you cannot." Polidori defied him to name them. "I can,"
said Lord Byron, "swim across that river--I can snuff out that candle
with a pistol-shot at the distance of twenty paces--and I have written a
poem[118] of which 14,000 copies were sold in one day."

The jealous pique of the Doctor against Shelley was constantly breaking
out; and on the occasion of some victory which the latter had gained
over him in a sailing-match, he took it into his head that his
antagonist had treated him with contempt; and went so far, in
consequence, notwithstanding Shelley's known sentiments against
duelling, as to proffer him a sort of challenge, at which Shelley, as
might be expected, only laughed. Lord Byron, however, fearing that the
vivacious physician might still further take advantage of this
peculiarity of his friend, said to him, "Recollect, that though Shelley
has some scruples about duelling, _I_ have none; and shall be, at all
times, ready to take his place."

At Diodati, his life was passed in the same regular round of habits and
occupations into which, when left to himself, he always naturally fell;
a late breakfast, then a visit to the Shelleys' cottage and an excursion
on the Lake;--at five, dinner[119] (when he usually preferred being
alone), and then, if the weather permitted, an excursion again. He and
Shelley had joined in purchasing a boat, for which they gave twenty-five
_louis_,--a small sailing vessel, fitted to stand the usual squalls of
the climate, and, at that time, the only keeled boat on the Lake. When
the weather did not allow of their excursions after dinner,--an
occurrence not unfrequent during this very wet summer,--the inmates of
the cottage passed their evenings at Diodati, and, when the rain
rendered it inconvenient for them to return home, remained there to
sleep. "We often," says one, who was not the least ornamental of the
party, "sat up in conversation till the morning light. There was never
any lack of subjects, and, grave or gay, we were always interested."

During a week of rain at this time, having amused themselves with
reading German ghost-stories, they agreed, at last, to write something
in imitation of them. "You and I," said Lord Byron to Mrs. Shelley,
"will publish ours together." He then began his tale of the Vampire;
and, having the whole arranged in his head, repeated to them a sketch
of the story[120] one evening,--but, from the narrative being in prose,
made but little progress in filling up his outline. The most memorable
result, indeed, of their story-telling compact, was Mrs. Shelley's wild
and powerful romance of Frankenstein,--one of those original conceptions
that take hold of the public mind at once, and for ever.

Towards the latter end of June, as we have seen in one of the preceding
letters, Lord Byron, accompanied by his friend Shelley, made a tour in
his boat round the Lake, and visited, "with the Heloise before him," all
those scenes around Meillerie and Clarens, which have become consecrated
for ever by ideal passion, and by that power which Genius alone
possesses, of giving such life to its dreams as to make them seem
realities. In the squall off Meillerie, which he mentions, their danger
was considerable[121]. In the expectation, every moment, of being
obliged to swim for his life, Lord Byron had already thrown off his
coat, and, as Shelley was no swimmer, insisted upon endeavouring, by
some means, to save him. This offer, however, Shelley positively
refused; and seating himself quietly upon a locker, and grasping the
rings at each end firmly in his hands, declared his determination to go
down in that position, without a struggle.[122]

Subjoined to that interesting little work, the "Six Weeks' Tour," there
is a letter by Shelley himself, giving an account of this excursion
round the Lake, and written with all the enthusiasm such scenes should
inspire. In describing a beautiful child they saw at the village of
Nerni, he says, "My companion gave him a piece of money, which he took
without speaking, with a sweet smile of easy thankfulness, and then with
an unembarrassed air turned to his play." There were, indeed, few
things Lord Byron more delighted in than to watch beautiful children at
play;--"many a lovely Swiss child (says a person who saw him daily at
this time) received crowns from him as the reward of their grace and
sweetness."

Speaking of their lodgings at Nerni, which were gloomy and dirty, Mr.
Shelley says, "On returning to our inn, we found that the servant had
arranged our rooms, and deprived them of the greater portion of their
former disconsolate appearance. They reminded my companion of
Greece:--it was five years, he said, since he had slept in such beds."

Luckily for Shelley's full enjoyment of these scenes, he had never
before happened to read the Heloise; and though his companion had long
been familiar with that romance, the sight of the region itself, the
"birth-place of deep Love," every spot of which seemed instinct with the
passion of the story, gave to the whole a fresh and actual existence in
his mind. Both were under the spell of the Genius of the place,--both
full of emotion; and as they walked silently through the vineyards that
were once the "bosquet de Julie," Lord Byron suddenly exclaimed, "Thank
God, Polidori is not here."

That the glowing stanzas suggested to him by this scene were written
upon the spot itself appears almost certain, from the letter addressed
to Mr. Murray on his way back to Diodati, in which he announces the
third Canto as complete, and consisting of 117 stanzas. At Ouchy, near
Lausanne,--the place from which that letter is dated--he and his friend
were detained two days, in a small inn, by the weather: and it was
there, in that short interval, that he wrote his "Prisoner of Chillon,"
adding one more deathless association to the already immortalised
localities of the Lake.

On his return from this excursion to Diodati, an occasion was afforded
for the gratification of his jesting propensities by the avowal of the
young physician that--he had fallen in love. On the evening of this
tender confession they both appeared at Shelley's cottage--Lord Byron,
in the highest and most boyish spirits, rubbing his hands as he walked
about the room, and in that utter incapacity of retention which was one
of his foibles, making jesting allusions to the secret he had just
heard. The brow of the Doctor darkened as this pleasantry went on, and,
at last, he angrily accused Lord Byron of hardness of heart. "I never,"
said he, "met with a person so unfeeling." This sally, though the poet
had evidently brought it upon himself, annoyed him most deeply. "Call
_me_ cold-hearted--_me_ insensible!" he exclaimed, with manifest
emotion--"as well might you say that glass is not brittle, which has
been cast down a precipice, and lies dashed to pieces at the foot!"

In the month of July he paid a visit to Copet, and was received by the
distinguished hostess with a cordiality the more sensibly felt by him
as, from his personal unpopularity at this time, he had hardly ventured
to count upon it.[123] In her usual frank style, she took him to task
upon his matrimonial conduct--but in a way that won upon his mind, and
disposed him to yield to her suggestions. He must endeavour, she told
him, to bring about a reconciliation with his wife, and must submit to
contend no longer with the opinion of the world. In vain did he quote
her own motto to Delphine, "Un homme peut braver, une femme doit se
succomber aux opinions du monde;"--her reply was, that all this might be
very well to say, but that, in real life, the duty and necessity of
yielding belonged also to the man. Her eloquence, in short, so far
succeeded, that he was prevailed upon to write a letter to a friend in
England, declaring himself still willing to be reconciled to Lady
Byron,--a concession not a little startling to those who had so often,
lately, heard him declare that, "having done all in his power to
persuade Lady Byron to return, and with this view put off as long as he
could signing the deed of separation, that step being once taken, they
were now divided for ever."

Of the particulars of this brief negotiation that ensued upon Madame de
Stael's suggestion, I have no very accurate remembrance; but there can
be little doubt that its failure, after the violence he had done his own
pride in the overture, was what first infused any mixture of resentment
or bitterness into the feelings hitherto entertained by him throughout
these painful differences. He had, indeed, since his arrival in Geneva,
invariably spoken of his lady with kindness and regret, imputing the
course she had taken, in leaving him, not to herself but others, and
assigning whatever little share of blame he would allow her to bear in
the transaction to the simple and, doubtless, true cause--her not at all
understanding him. "I have no doubt," he would sometimes say, "that she
really did believe me to be mad."

Another resolution connected with his matrimonial affairs, in which he
often, at this time, professed his fixed intention to persevere, was
that of never allowing himself to touch any part of his wife's fortune.
Such a sacrifice, there is no doubt, would have been, in his situation,
delicate and manly; but though the natural bent of his disposition led
him to _make_ the resolution, he wanted,--what few, perhaps, could have
attained,--the fortitude to _keep_ it.

The effects of the late struggle on his mind, in stirring up all its
resources and energies, was visible in the great activity of his genius
during the whole of this period, and the rich variety, both in character
and colouring, of the works with which it teemed. Besides the third
Canto of Childe Harold and the Prisoner of Chillon, he produced also his
two poems, "Darkness" and "The Dream," the latter of which cost him many
a tear in writing,--being, indeed, the most mournful, as well as
picturesque, "story of a wandering life" that ever came from the pen and
heart of man. Those verses, too, entitled "The Incantation," which he
introduced afterwards, without any connection with the subject, into
Manfred, were also (at least, the less bitter portion of them) the
production of this period; and as they were written soon after the last
fruitless attempt at reconciliation, it is needless to say who was in
his thoughts while he penned some of the opening stanzas.

"Though thy slumber must be deep,
Yet thy spirit shall not sleep;
There are shades which will not vanish,
There are thoughts thou canst not banish;
By a power to thee unknown,
Thou canst never be alone;
Thou art wrapt as with a shroud,
Thou art gather'd in a cloud;
And for ever shalt thou dwell
In the spirit of this spell.

"Though thou see'st me not pass by,
Thou shalt feel me with thine eye,
As a thing that, though unseen,
Must be near thee, and hath been;
And when, in that secret dread,
Thou hast turn'd around thy head,
Thou shalt marvel I am not
As thy shadow on the spot,
And the power which thou dost feel
Shall be what thou must conceal."

Besides the unfinished "Vampire," he began also, at this time, another
romance in prose, founded upon the story of the Marriage of Belphegor,
and intended to shadow out his own matrimonial fate. The wife of this
satanic personage he described much in the same spirit that pervades his
delineation of Donna Inez in the first Canto of Don Juan. While engaged,
however, in writing this story, he heard from England that Lady Byron
was ill, and, his heart softening at the intelligence, he threw the
manuscript into the fire. So constantly were the good and evil
principles of his nature conflicting for mastery over him.[124]

The two following Poems, so different from each other in their
character,--the first prying with an awful scepticism into the darkness
of another world, and the second breathing all that is most natural and
tender in the affections of this,--were also written at this time, and
have never before been published.

[Footnote 116: Childe Harold, Canto iii.]

[Footnote 117: To this lameness of Polidori, one of the preceding
letters of Lord Byron alludes.]

[Footnote 118: The Corsair.]

[Footnote 119: His system of diet here was regulated by an abstinence
almost incredible. A thin slice of bread, with tea, at breakfast--a
light, vegetable dinner, with a bottle or two of Seltzer water, tinged
with vin de Grave, and in the evening, a cup of green tea, without milk
or sugar, formed the whole of his sustenance. The pangs of hunger he
appeased by privately chewing tobacco and smoking cigars.]

[Footnote 120: From his remembrance of this sketch, Polidori afterwards
vamped up his strange novel of the Vampire, which, under the supposition
of its being Lord Byron's, was received with such enthusiasm in France.
It would, indeed, not a little deduct from our value of foreign fame, if
what some French writers have asserted be true, that the appearance of
this extravagant novel among our neighbours first attracted their
attention to the genius of Byron.]

[Footnote 121: "The wind (says Lord Byron's fellow-voyager) gradually
increased in violence until it blew tremendously; and, as it came from
the remotest extremity of the Lake, produced waves of a frightful
height, and covered the whole surface with a chaos of foam. One of our
boatmen, who was a dreadfully stupid fellow, persisted in holding the
sail at a time when the boat was on the point of being driven under
water by the hurricane. On discovering this error, he let it entirely
go, and the boat for a moment refused to obey the helm; in addition, the
rudder was so broken as to render the management of it very difficult;
one wave fell in, and then another."]

[Footnote 122: "I felt, in this near prospect of death (says Mr.
Shelley), a mixture of sensations, among which terror entered, though
but subordinately. My feelings would have been less painful had I been
alone; but I knew that my companion would have attempted to save me, and
I was overcome with humiliation, when I thought that his life might have
been risked to preserve mine. When we arrived at St. Gingoux, the
inhabitants, who stood on the shore, unaccustomed to see a vessel as
frail as ours, and fearing to venture at all on such a sea, exchanged
looks of wonder and congratulation with our boatmen, who, as well as
ourselves, were well pleased to set foot on shore."]

[Footnote 123: In the account of this visit to Copet in his Memoranda,
he spoke in high terms of the daughter of his hostess, the present
Duchess de Broglie, and, in noticing how much she appeared to be
attached to her husband, remarked that "Nothing was more pleasing than
to see the developement of the domestic affections in a very young
woman." Of Madame de Stael, in that Memoir, he spoke thus:--"Madame de
Stael was a good woman at heart and the cleverest at bottom, but spoilt
by a wish to be--she knew not what. In her own house she was amiable; in
any other person's, you wished her gone, and in her own again."]

[Footnote 124: Upon the same occasion, indeed, he wrote some verses in a
spirit not quite so generous, of which a few of the opening lines is all
I shall give:--

"And thou wert sad--yet I was not with thee!
And thou wert sick--and yet I was not near.
Methought that Joy and Health alone could be
Where I was _not_, and pain and sorrow here.
And is it thus?--it is as I foretold,
And shall be more so:--" &c. &c.
]

* * * * *

"EXTRACT FROM AN UNPUBLISHED POEM.

"Could I remount the river of my years
To the first fountain of our smiles and tears,
I would not trace again the stream of hours
Between their outworn banks of wither'd flowers,
But bid it flow as now--until it glides
Into the number of the nameless tides. * * *
What is this Death?--a quiet of the heart?
The whole of that of which we are a part?
For Life is but a vision--what I see
Of all which lives alone is life to me,
And being so--the absent are the dead,
Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread
A dreary shroud around us, and invest
With sad remembrances our hours of rest.
"The absent are the dead--for they are cold,
And ne'er can be what once we did behold;
And they are changed, and cheerless,--or if yet
The unforgotten do not all forget,
Since thus divided--equal must it be
If the deep barrier be of earth, or sea;
It may be both--but one day end it must
In the dark union of insensate dust.
"The under-earth inhabitants--are they
But mingled millions decomposed to clay?
The ashes of a thousand ages spread
Wherever man has trodden or shall tread?
Or do they in their silent cities dwell
Each in his incommunicative cell?
Or have they their own language? and a sense
Of breathless being?--darken'd and intense
As midnight in her solitude?--Oh Earth!
Where are the past?--and wherefore had they birth?
The dead are thy inheritors--and we
But bubbles on thy surface; and the key
Of thy profundity is in the grave,
The ebon portal of thy peopled cave,
Where I would walk in spirit, and behold
Our elements resolved to things untold,
And fathom hidden wonders, and explore
The essence of great bosoms now no more." * *

* * * * *

"TO AUGUSTA.

"My sister! my sweet sister! if a name
Dearer and purer were, it should be thine.
Mountains and seas divide us, but I claim
No tears, but tenderness to answer mine:
Go where I will, to me thou art the same--
A loved regret which I would not resign.
There yet are two things in my destiny,--
A world to roam through, and a home with thee.

"The first were nothing--had I still the last,
It were the haven of my happiness;
But other claims and other ties thou hast,
And mine is not the wish to make them less.
A strange doom is thy father's son's, and past
Recalling, as it lies beyond redress;
Reversed for him our grandsire's[125] fate of yore,--
He had no rest at sea, nor I on shore.

"If my inheritance of storms hath been
In other elements, and on the rocks
Of perils, overlook'd or unforeseen,
I have sustain'd my share of worldly shocks,
The fault was mine; nor do I seek to screen
My errors with defensive paradox;
I have been cunning in mine overthrow,
The careful pilot of my proper woe,

"Mine were my faults, and mine be their reward.
My whole life was a contest, since the day
That gave me being, gave me that which marr'd
The gift,--a fate, or will that walk'd astray;
And I at times have found the struggle hard,
And thought of shaking off my bonds of clay:
But now I fain would for a time survive,
If but to see what next can well arrive.

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