Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III

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* * * * *

LETTER 200. TO MR. MOORE.

"Nd., September 15. 1814.

"I have written to you one letter to-night, but must send you this
much more, as I have not franked my number, to say that I rejoice
in my god-daughter, and will send her a coral and bells, which I
hope she will accept, the moment I get back to London.

"My head is at this moment in a state of confusion, from various
causes, which I can neither describe nor explain--but let that
pass. My employments have been very rural--fishing, shooting,
bathing, and boating. Books I have but few here, and those I have
read ten times over, till sick of them. So, I have taken to
breaking soda-water bottles with my pistols, and jumping into the
water, and rowing over it, and firing at the fowls of the air. But
why should I 'monster my nothings' to you, who are well employed,
and happily too, I should hope? For my part, I am happy, too, in my
way--but, as usual, have contrived to get into three or four
perplexities, which I do not see my way through. But a few days,
perhaps a day, will determine one of them.

"You do not say a word to me of your poem. I wish I could see or
hear it. I neither could, nor would, do it or its author any harm.
I believe I told you of Larry and Jacquy. A friend of mine was
reading--at least a friend of his was reading--said Larry and
Jacquy in a Brighton coach. A passenger took up the book and
queried as to the author. The proprietor said 'there were
_two_'--to which the answer of the unknown was, 'Ay, ay--a joint
concern, I suppose, _summot_ like Sternhold and Hopkins.'

"Is not this excellent? I would not have missed the 'vile
comparison' to have 'scaped being one of the 'Arcades ambo et
cantare pares.' Good night. Again yours."

* * * * *

LETTER 201. TO MR. MOORE.

"Newstead Abbey, Sept. 20. 1814.

"Here's to her who long
Hath waked the poet's sigh!
The girl who gave to song
What gold could never buy.

--My dear Moore, I am going to be married--that is, I am
accepted[49], and one usually hopes the rest will follow. My
mother of the Gracchi (that _are_ to be) _you_ think too
strait-laced for me, although the paragon of only children, and
invested with 'golden opinions of all sorts of men,' and full of
'most blest conditions' as Desdemona herself. Miss Milbanke is the
lady, and I have her father's invitation to proceed there in my
elect capacity,--which, however, I cannot do till I have settled
some business in London and got a blue coat.

"She is said to be an heiress, but of that I really know nothing
certainly, and shall not enquire. But I do know, that she has
talents and excellent qualities; and you will not deny her
judgment, after having refused six suitors and taken me.

"Now, if you have any thing to say against this, pray do; my mind's
made up, positively fixed, determined, and therefore I will listen
to reason, because now it can do no harm. Things may occur to break
it off, but I will hope not. In the mean time, I tell you (a
_secret_, by the by,--at least, till I know she wishes it to be
public,) that I have proposed and am accepted. You need not be in a
hurry to wish me joy, for one mayn't be married for months. I am
going to town to-morrow; but expect to be here, on my way there,
within a fortnight.

"If this had not happened, I should have gone to Italy. In my way
down, perhaps, you will meet me at Nottingham, and come over with
me here. I need not say that nothing will give me greater pleasure.
I must, of course, reform thoroughly; and, seriously, if I can
contribute to her happiness, I shall secure my own. She is so good
a person, that--that--in short, I wish I was a better. Ever," &c.

[Footnote 49: On the day of the arrival of the lady's answer, he was
sitting at dinner, when his gardener came in and presented him with his
mother's wedding ring, which she had lost many years before, and which
the gardener had just found in digging up the mould under her window.
Almost at the same moment, the letter from Miss Milbanke arrived; and
Lord Byron exclaimed, "If it contains a consent, I will be married with
this very ring." It did contain a very flattering acceptance of his
proposal, and a duplicate of the letter had been sent to London, in case
this should have missed him.--_Memoranda_.]

* * * * *

LETTER 202. TO THE COUNTESS OF * * *.

"Albany, October 5. 1814.

"Dear Lady * *,

"Your recollection and invitation do me great honour; but I am
going to be 'married, and can't come.' My intended is two hundred
miles off, and the moment my business here is arranged, I must set
out in a great hurry to be happy. Miss Milbanke is the good-natured
person who has undertaken me, and, of course, I am very much in
love, and as silly as all single gentlemen must be in that
sentimental situation. I have been accepted these three weeks; but
when the event will take place, I don't exactly know. It depends
partly upon lawyers, who are never in a hurry. One can be sure of
nothing; but, at present, there appears no other interruption to
this intention, which seems as mutual as possible, and now no
secret, though I did not tell first,--and all our relatives are
congratulating away to right and left in the most fatiguing manner.

"You perhaps know the lady. She is niece to Lady Melbourne, and
cousin to Lady Cowper and others of your acquaintance, and has no
fault, except being a great deal too good for me, and that _I_
must pardon, if nobody else should. It might have been _two_ years
ago, and, if it had, would have saved me a world of trouble. She
has employed the interval in refusing about half a dozen of my
particular friends, (as she did me once, by the way,) and has taken
me at last, for which I am very much obliged to her. I wish it was
well over, for I do hate bustle, and there is no marrying without
some;--and then, I must not marry in a black coat, they tell me,
and I can't bear a blue one.

"Pray forgive me for scribbling all this nonsense. You know I must
be serious all the rest of my life, and this is a parting piece of
buffoonery, which I write with tears in my eyes, expecting to be
agitated. Believe me most seriously and sincerely your obliged
servant, BYRON.

"P.S. My best rems. to Lord * * on his return."

* * * * *

LETTER 203. TO MR. MOORE.

"October 7. 1814.

"Notwithstanding the contradictory paragraph in the Morning
Chronicle, which must have been sent by * *, or perhaps--I know not
why I should suspect Claughton of such a thing, and yet I partly
do, because it might interrupt his renewal of purchase, if so
disposed; in short it matters not, but we are all in the road to
matrimony--lawyers settling, relations congratulating, my intended
as kind as heart could wish, and every one, whose opinion I value,
very glad of it. All her relatives, and all mine too, seem equally
pleased.

"Perry was very sorry, and has _re_-contradicted, as you will
perceive by this day's paper. It was, to be sure, a devil of an
insertion, since the first paragraph came from Sir Ralph's own
County Journal, and this in the teeth of it would appear to him and
his as _my_ denial. But I have written to do away that, enclosing
Perry's letter, which was very polite and kind.

"Nobody hates bustle so much as I do; but there seems a fatality
over every scene of my drama, always a row of some sort or other.
No matter--Fortune is my best friend; and as I acknowledge my
obligations to her, I hope she will treat me better than she
treated the Athenian, who took some merit to _himself_ on some
occasion, but (after that) took no more towns. In fact, _she_, that
exquisite goddess, has hitherto carried me through every thing, and
will I hope, now; since I own it will be all _her_ doing.

"Well, now, for thee. Your article on * * is perfection itself. You
must not leave off reviewing. By Jove, I believe you can do any
thing. There is wit, and taste, and learning, and good humour
(though not a whit less severe for that), in every line of that
critique.

"Next to _your_ being an E. Reviewer, _my_ being of the same
kidney, and Jeffrey's being such a friend to both, are amongst the
events which I conceive were not calculated upon in Mr.--what's his
name?'s--'Essay on Probabilities.'

"But, Tom, I say--Oons! Scott menaces the 'Lord of the Isles." Do
you mean to compete? or lay by, till this wave has broke upon the
_shelves_? (of booksellers, not rocks--a _broken_ metaphor, by the
way.) You _ought_ to be afraid of nobody; but your modesty is
really as provoking and unnecessary as a * *'s. I am very merry,
and have just been writing some elegiac stanzas on the death of Sir
P. Parker. He was my first cousin, but never met since boyhood. Our
relations desired me, and I have scribbled and given it to Perry,
who will chronicle it to-morrow. I am as sorry for him as one could
be for one I never saw since I was a child; but should not have
wept melodiously, except 'at the request of friends.'

"I hope to get out of town and be married, but I shall take
Newstead in my way; and you must meet me at Nottingham and
accompany me to mine Abbey. I will tell you the day when I know it.

"Ever," &c.

"P.S. By the way my wife elect is perfection, and I hear of nothing
but her merits and her wonders, and that she is 'very pretty.' Her
expectations, I am told, are great; but _what_, I have not asked. I
have not seen her these ten months."

* * * * *

LETTER 204. TO MR. MOORE.

"October 14. 1814.

"An' there were any thing in marriage that would make a difference
between my friends and me, particularly in your case, I would 'none
on't.' My agent sets off for Durham next week, and I shall follow
him, taking Newstead and you in my way. I certainly did not address
Miss Milbanke with these views, but it is likely she may prove a
considerable _parti_. All her father can give, or leave her, he
will; and from her childless uncle, Lord Wentworth, whose barony,
it is supposed, will devolve on Ly. Milbanke (her sister), she has
expectations. But these will depend upon his own disposition, which
seems very partial towards her. She is an only child, and Sir R.'s
estates, though dipped by electioneering, are considerable. Part of
them are settled on her; but whether _that_ will be _dowered_ now,
I do not know,--though, from what has been intimated to me, it
probably will. The lawyers are to settle this among them, and I am
getting my property into matrimonial array, and myself ready for
the journey to Seaham, which I must make in a week or ten days.

"I certainly did not dream that she was attached to me, which it
seems she has been for some time. I also thought her of a very cold
disposition, in which I was also mistaken--it is a long story, and
I won't trouble you with it. As to her virtues, &c. &c. you will
hear enough of them (for she is a kind of _pattern_ in the north),
without my running into a display on the subject. It is well that
_one_ of us is of such fame, since there is sad deficit in the
_morale_ of that article upon my part,--all owing to my 'bitch of a
star,' as Captain Tranchemont says of his planet.

"Don't think you have not said enough of me in your article on T *
*; what more could or need be said?

"Your long-delayed and expected work--I suppose you will take
fright at 'The Lord of the Isles' and Scott now. You must do as you
like,--I have said my say. You ought to fear comparison with none,
and any one would stare, who heard you were so tremulous,--though,
after all, I believe it is the surest sign of talent. Good morning.
I hope we shall meet soon, but I will write again, and perhaps you
will meet me at Nottingham. Pray say so.

"P.S. If this union is productive, you shall name the first
fruits."

* * * * *

LETTER 205. TO MR. HENRY DRURY.

"October 18. 1814.

"My dear Drury,

"Many thanks for your hitherto unacknowledged 'Anecdotes.' Now for
one of mine--I am going to be married, and have been engaged this
month. It is a long story, and, therefore, I won't tell it,--an old
and (though I did not know it till lately) a _mutual_ attachment.
The very sad life I have led since I was your pupil must partly
account for the offs and _ons_ in this now to be arranged business.
We are only waiting for the lawyers and settlements, &c.; and next
week, or the week after, I shall go down to Seaham in the new
character of a regular suitor for a wife of mine own.

"I hope Hodgson is in a fair way on the same voyage--I saw him and
his idol at Hastings. I wish he would be married at the same
time,--I should like to make a party,--like people electrified in a
row, by (or rather through) the same chain, holding one another's
hands, and all feeling the shock at once. I have not yet apprised
him of this. He makes such a serious matter of all these things,
and is so 'melancholy and gentlemanlike,' that it is quite
overcoming to us choice spirits.

"They say one shouldn't be married in a black coat. I won't have a
blue one,--that's flat. I hate it.

"Yours," &c.

* * * * *

LETTER 206. TO MR. COWELL.

"October 22. 1814.

"My dear Cowell,

"Many and sincere thanks for your kind letter--the bet, or rather
forfeit, was one hundred to Hawke, and fifty to Hay (nothing to
Kelly), for a guinea received from each of the two former.[50] I
shall feel much obliged by your setting me right if I am incorrect
in this statement in any way, and have reasons for wishing you to
recollect as much as possible of what passed, and state it to
Hodgson. My reason is this: some time ago Mr. * * * required a bet
of me which I never made, and of course refused to pay, and have
heard no more of it; to prevent similar mistakes is my object in
wishing you to remember well what passed, and to put Hodgson in
possession of your memory on the subject.

"I hope to see you soon in my way through Cambridge. Remember me to
H., and believe me ever and truly," &c.

[Footnote 50: He had agreed to forfeit these sums to the persons
mentioned, should he ever marry.]

* * * * *

Soon after the date of this letter, Lord Byron had to pay a visit to
Cambridge for the purpose of voting for Mr. Clarke, who had been
started by Trinity College as one of the candidates for Sir Busick
Harwood's Professorship. On this occasion, a circumstance occurred which
could not but be gratifying to him. As he was delivering in his vote to
the Vice-Chancellor, in the Senate House, the under-graduates in the
gallery ventured to testify their admiration of him by a general murmur
of applause and stamping of the feet. For this breach of order, the
gallery was immediately cleared by order of the Vice-Chancellor.

At the beginning of the month of December, being called up to town by
business, I had opportunities, from being a good deal in my noble
friend's society, of observing the state of his mind and feelings, under
the prospect of the important change he was now about to undergo; and it
was with pain I found that those sanguine hopes[51] with which I had
sometimes looked forward to the happy influence of marriage, in winning
him over to the brighter and better side of life, were, by a view of all
the circumstances of his present destiny, considerably diminished;
while, at the same time, not a few doubts and misgivings, which had
never before so strongly occurred to me, with regard to his own fitness,
under any circumstances, for the matrimonial tie, filled me altogether
with a degree of foreboding anxiety as to his fate, which the
unfortunate events that followed but too fully justified.

The truth is, I fear, that rarely, if ever, have men of the higher order
of genius shown themselves fitted for the calm affections and comforts
that form the cement of domestic life. "One misfortune (says Pope) of
extraordinary geniuses is, that their very friends are more apt to
admire than love them." To this remark there have, no doubt, been
exceptions,--and I should pronounce Lord Byron, from my own experience,
to be one of them,--but it would not be difficult, perhaps, to show,
from the very nature and pursuits of genius, that such must generally be
the lot of all pre-eminently gifted with it; and that the same qualities
which enable them to command admiration are also those that too often
incapacitate them from conciliating love.

The very habits, indeed, of abstraction and self-study to which the
occupations of men of genius lead, are, in themselves, necessarily, of
an unsocial and detaching tendency, and require a large portion of
indulgence from others not to be set down as unamiable. One of the chief
sources, too, of sympathy and society between ordinary mortals being
their dependence on each other's intellectual resources, the operation
of this social principle must naturally be weakest in those whose own
mental stores are most abundant and self-sufficing, and who, rich in
such materials for thinking within themselves, are rendered so far
independent of any aid from others. It was this solitary luxury (which
Plato called "banqueting his own thoughts") that led Pope, as well as
Lord Byron, to prefer the silence and seclusion of his library to the
most agreeable conversation.--And not only too, is the necessity of
commerce with other minds less felt by such persons, but, from that
fastidiousness which the opulence of their own resources generates, the
society of those less gifted than themselves becomes often a restraint
and burden, to which not all the charms of friendship, or even love, can
reconcile them. "Nothing is so tiresome (says the poet of Vaucluse, in
assigning a reason for not living with some of his dearest friends) as
to converse with persons who have not the same information as one's
self."

But it is the cultivation and exercise of the imaginative faculty that,
more than any thing, tends to wean the man of genius from actual life,
and, by substituting the sensibilities of the imagination for those of
the heart, to render, at last, the medium through which he feels no less
unreal than that through which he thinks. Those images of ideal good and
beauty that surround him in his musings soon accustom him to consider
all that is beneath this high standard unworthy of his care; till, at
length, the heart becoming chilled as the fancy warms, it too often
happens that, in proportion as he has refined and elevated his theory of
all the social affections, he has unfitted himself for the practice of
them.[52] Hence so frequently it arises that, in persons of this
temperament, we see some bright but artificial idol of the brain usurp
the place of all real and natural objects of tenderness. The poet Dante,
a wanderer away from wife and children, passed the whole of a restless
and detached life in nursing his immortal dream of Beatrice; while
Petrarch, who would not suffer his only daughter to reside beneath his
roof, expended thirty-two years of poetry and passion on an idealised
love.

It is, indeed, in the very nature and essence of genius to be for ever
occupied intensely with Self, as the great centre and source of its
strength. Like the sister Rachel, in Dante, sitting all day before her
mirror,

"mai non si smaga
Del suo ammiraglio, e siede tutto giorno."

To this power of self-concentration, by which alone all the other powers
of genius are made available, there is, of course, no such disturbing
and fatal enemy as those sympathies and affections that draw the mind
out actively towards others[53]; and, accordingly, it will be found
that, among those who have felt within themselves a call to immortality,
the greater number have, by a sort of instinct, kept aloof from such
ties, and, instead of the softer duties and rewards of being amiable,
reserved themselves for the high, hazardous chances of being great. In
looking back through the lives of the most illustrious poets,--the class
of intellect in which the characteristic features of genius are,
perhaps, most strongly marked,--we shall find that, with scarcely one
exception, from Homer down to Lord Byron, they have been, in their
several degrees, restless and solitary spirits, with minds wrapped up,
like silk-worms, in their own tasks, either strangers, or rebels to
domestic ties, and bearing about with them a deposit for posterity in
their souls, to the jealous watching and enriching of which almost all
other thoughts and considerations have been sacrificed.

"To follow poetry as one ought (says the authority[54] I have already
quoted), one must forget father and mother and cleave to it alone." In
these few words is pointed out the sole path that leads genius to
greatness. On such terms alone are the high places of fame to be
won;--nothing less than the sacrifice of the entire man can achieve
them. However delightful, therefore, may be the spectacle of a man of
genius tamed and domesticated in society, taking docilely upon him the
yoke of the social ties, and enlightening without disturbing the sphere
in which he moves, we must nevertheless, in the midst of our admiration,
bear in mind that it is not thus smoothly or amiably immortality has
been ever struggled for, or won. The poet thus circumstanced may be
popular, may be loved; for the happiness of himself and those linked
with him he is in the right road,--but not for greatness. The marks by
which Fame has always separated her great martyrs from the rest of
mankind are not upon him, and the crown cannot be his. He may dazzle,
may captivate the circle, and even the times in which he lives, but he
is not for hereafter.

To the general description here given of that high class of human
intelligences to which he belonged, the character of Lord Byron was, in
many respects, a signal exception. Born with strong affections and
ardent passions, the world had, from first to last, too firm a hold on
his sympathies to let imagination altogether usurp the place of reality,
either in his feelings, or in the objects of them. His life, indeed, was
one continued struggle between that instinct of genius, which was for
ever drawing him back into the lonely laboratory of Self, and those
impulses of passion, ambition, and vanity, which again hurried him off
into the crowd, and entangled him in its interests; and though it may be
granted that he would have been more purely and abstractedly the
_poet_, had he been less thoroughly, in all his pursuits and
propensities, the _man_, yet from this very mixture and alloy has it
arisen that his pages bear so deeply the stamp of real life, and that in
the works of no poet, with the exception of Shakspeare, can every
various mood of the mind--whether solemn or gay, whether inclined to the
ludicrous or the sublime, whether seeking to divert itself with the
follies of society or panting after the grandeur of solitary
nature--find so readily a strain of sentiment in accordance with its
every passing tone.

But while the naturally warm cast of his affections and temperament gave
thus a substance and truth to his social feelings which those of too
many of his fellow votaries of Genius have wanted, it was not to be
expected that an imagination of such range and power should have been so
early developed and unrestrainedly indulged without producing, at last,
some of those effects upon the heart which have invariably been found
attendant on such a predominance of this faculty. It must have been
observed, indeed, that the period when his natural affections flourished
most healthily was before he had yet arrived at the full consciousness
of his genius,--before Imagination had yet accustomed him to those
glowing pictures, after gazing upon which all else appeared cold and
colourless. From the moment of this initiation into the wonders of his
own mind, a distaste for the realities of life began to grow upon him.
Not even that intense craving after affection, which nature had
implanted in him, could keep his ardour still alive in a pursuit whose
results fell so short of his "imaginings;" and though, from time to
time, the combined warmth of his fancy and temperament was able to call
up a feeling which to his eyes wore the semblance of love, it may be
questioned whether his heart had ever much share in such passions, or
whether, after his first launch into the boundless sea of imagination,
he could ever have been brought back and fixed by any lasting
attachment. Actual objects there were, in but too great number, who, as
long as the illusion continued, kindled up his thoughts and were the
themes of his song. But they were, after all, little more than mere
dreams of the hour;--the qualities with which he invested them were
almost all ideal, nor could have stood the test of a month's, or even
week's, cohabitation. It was but the reflection of his own bright
conceptions that he saw in each new object; and while persuading himself
that they furnished the models of his heroines, he was, on the contrary,
but fancying that he beheld his heroines in them.

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