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Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)

T >> Thomas Moore >> Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)



Transcriber's Note:

This is the first volume of the Six volume series

Life of Lord Byron
with his Letters and Journals

by
Thomas Moore.

Links to the other five volumes.

Volume Two. E-Text No.16570--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16570
Volume Three. E-Text No.16548--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16548
Volume Four. E-Text No.16549--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16549
Volume Five. E-Text No.16609--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16609
Volume Six. E-Text No.14841--http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/14841




LIFE
OF
LORD BYRON:

WITH HIS LETTERS AND JOURNALS.


BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ.


IN SIX VOLUMES.--VOL. I.


LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
1854.




CONTENTS OF VOL. I.


LETTERS AND JOURNALS OF LORD BYRON, WITH NOTICES OF HIS LIFE, TO
THE PERIOD OF HIS RETURN FROM THE CONTINENT, JULY, 1811.




TO

SIR WALTER SCOTT, BARONET,


THESE VOLUMES

ARE INSCRIBED

BY HIS AFFECTIONATE FRIEND,

THOMAS MOORE.


December, 1829.




PREFACE

TO THE

FIRST VOLUME OF THE FIRST EDITION.[1]


In presenting these Volumes to the public I should have felt, I own,
considerable diffidence, from a sincere distrust in my own powers of
doing justice to such a task, were I not well convinced that there is
in the subject itself, and in the rich variety of materials here
brought to illustrate it, a degree of attraction and interest which it
would be difficult, even for hands the most unskilful, to extinguish.
However lamentable were the circumstances under which Lord Byron
became estranged from his country, to his long absence from England,
during the most brilliant period of his powers, we are indebted for
all those interesting letters which compose the greater part of the
Second Volume of this work, and which will be found equal, if not
superior, in point of vigour, variety, and liveliness, to any that
have yet adorned this branch of our literature.

What has been said of Petrarch, that "his correspondence and verses
together afford the progressive interest of a narrative in which the
poet is always identified with the man," will be found applicable, in
a far greater degree, to Lord Byron, in whom the literary and the
personal character were so closely interwoven, that to have left his
works without the instructive commentary which his Life and
Correspondence afford, would have been equally an injustice both to
himself and to the world.




PREFACE

TO THE

SECOND VOLUME OF THE FIRST EDITION.


The favourable reception which I ventured to anticipate for the First
Volume of this work has been, to the full extent of my expectations,
realised; and I may without scruple thus advert to the success it has
met with, being well aware that to the interest of the subject and the
materials, not to any merit of the editor, such a result is to be
attributed. Among the less agreeable, though not least valid, proofs
of this success may be counted the attacks which, from more than one
quarter, the Volume has provoked;--attacks angry enough, it must be
confessed, but, from their very anger, impotent, and, as containing
nothing whatever in the shape either of argument or fact, not
entitled, I may be pardoned for saying, to the slightest notice.

Of a very different description, both as regards the respectability of
the source from whence it comes, and the mysterious interest involved
in its contents, is a document which made its appearance soon after
the former Volume,[2] and which I have annexed, without a single line
of comment, to the present;--contenting myself, on this painful
subject, with entreating the reader's attention to some extracts, as
beautiful as they are, to my mind, convincing, from an unpublished
pamphlet of Lord Byron, which will be found in the following pages.[3]

Sanguinely as I was led to augur of the reception of our First Volume,
of the success of that which we now present to the public, I am
disposed to feel even still more confident. Though self-banished from
England, it was plain that to England alone Lord Byron continued to
look, throughout the remainder of his days, not only as the natural
theatre of his literary fame, but as the tribunal to which all his
thoughts, feelings, virtues, and frailties were to be referred; and
the exclamation of Alexander, "Oh, Athenians, how much it costs me to
obtain your praises!" might have been, with equal truth, addressed by
the noble exile to his countrymen. To keep the minds of the English
public for ever occupied about him,--if not with his merits, with his
faults; if not in applauding, in blaming him,--was, day and night,
the constant ambition of his soul; and in the correspondence he so
regularly maintained with his publisher, one of the chief mediums
through which this object was to be effected lay. Mr. Murray's house
being then, as now, the resort of most of those literary men who are,
at the same time, men of the world, his Lordship knew that whatever
particulars he might wish to make public concerning himself, would, if
transmitted to that quarter, be sure to circulate from thence
throughout society. It was on this presumption that he but rarely, as
we shall find him more than once stating, corresponded with any others
of his friends at home; and to the mere accident of my having been,
myself, away from England, at the time, was I indebted for the
numerous and no less interesting letters with which, during the same
period, he honoured me, and which now enrich this volume.

In these two sets of correspondence (given, as they are here, with as
little suppression as a regard to private feelings and to certain
other considerations, warrants) will be found a complete history, from
the pen of the poet himself, of the course of his life and thoughts,
during this most energetic period of his whole career;--presenting
altogether so wide a canvass of animated and, often, unconscious
self-portraiture, as even the communicative spirit of genius has
seldom, if ever, before bestowed on the world.

Some insinuations, calling into question the disinterestedness of the
lady whose fate was connected with that of Lord Byron during his
latter years, having been brought forward, or rather revived, in a
late work, entitled "Galt's Life of Byron,"--a work wholly unworthy of
the respectable name it bears,--I may be allowed to adduce here a
testimony on this subject, which has been omitted in its proper
place,[4] but which will be more than sufficient to set the idle
calumny at rest. The circumstance here alluded to may be most clearly,
perhaps, communicated to my readers through the medium of the
following extract from a letter, which Mr. Barry (the friend and
banker of Lord Byron) did me the favour of addressing to me soon after
his Lordship's death[5]:--"When Lord Byron went to Greece, he gave me
orders to advance money to Madame G----; but that lady would never
consent to receive any. His Lordship had also told me that he meant to
leave his will in my hands, and that there would be a bequest in it of
10,000_l._ to Madame G----. He mentioned this circumstance also to
Lord Blessington. When the melancholy news of his death reached me, I
took for granted that this will would be found among the sealed papers
he had left with me; but there was no such instrument. I immediately
then wrote to Madame G----, enquiring if she knew any thing concerning
it, and mentioning, at the same time, what his Lordship had said as to
the legacy. To this the lady replied, that he had frequently spoken to
her on the same subject, but that she had always cut the conversation
short, as it was a topic she by no means liked to hear him speak upon.
In addition, she expressed a wish that no such will as I had mentioned
would be found; as her circumstances were already sufficiently
independent, and the world might put a wrong construction on her
attachment, should it appear that her fortunes were, in any degree,
bettered by it."




NOTICES

OF THE

LIFE OF LORD BYRON.


It has been said of Lord Byron, "that he was prouder of being a
descendant of those Byrons of Normandy, who accompanied William the
Conqueror into England, than of having been the author of Childe
Harold and Manfred." This remark is not altogether unfounded in truth.
In the character of the noble poet, the pride of ancestry was
undoubtedly one of the most decided features; and, as far as antiquity
alone gives lustre to descent, he had every reason to boast of the
claims of his race. In Doomsday-book, the name of Ralph de Burun ranks
high among the tenants of land in Nottinghamshire; and in the
succeeding reigns, under the title of Lords of Horestan Castle,[6] we
find his descendants holding considerable possessions in Derbyshire;
to which, afterwards, in the time of Edward I., were added the lands
of Rochdale in Lancashire. So extensive, indeed, in those early times,
was the landed wealth of the family, that the partition of their
property, in Nottinghamshire alone, has been sufficient to establish
some of the first families of the county.

Its antiquity, however, was not the only distinction by which the name
of Byron came recommended to its inheritor; those personal merits and
accomplishments, which form the best ornament of a genealogy, seem to
have been displayed in no ordinary degree by some of his ancestors. In
one of his own early poems, alluding to the achievements of his race,
he commemorates, with much satisfaction, those "mail-covered barons"
among them,

who proudly to battle
Led their vassals from Europe to Palestine's plain.

Adding,

Near Askalon's towers John of Horiston slumbers,
Unnerved is the hand of his minstrel by death.

As there is no record, however, as far as I can discover, of any of
his ancestors having been engaged in the Holy Wars, it is possible
that he may have had no other authority for this notion than the
tradition which he found connected with certain strange groups of
heads, which are represented on the old panel-work, in some of the
chambers at Newstead. In one of these groups, consisting of three
heads, strongly carved and projecting from the panel, the centre
figure evidently represents a Saracen or Moor, with an European female
on one side of him, and a Christian soldier on the other. In a second
group, which is in one of the bed-rooms, the female occupies the
centre, while on each side is the head of a Saracen, with the eyes
fixed earnestly upon her. Of the exact meaning of these figures there
is nothing certain known; but the tradition is, I understand, that
they refer to some love-adventure, in which one of those crusaders, of
whom the young poet speaks, was engaged.

Of the more certain, or, at least, better known exploits of the
family, it is sufficient, perhaps, to say, that, at the siege of
Calais under Edward III., and on the fields, memorable in their
respective eras, of Cressy, Bosworth, and Marston Moor, the name of
the Byrons reaped honours both of rank and fame, of which their young
descendant has, in the verses just cited, shown himself proudly
conscious.

It was in the reign of Henry VIII., on the dissolution of the
monasteries, that, by a royal grant, the church and priory of
Newstead, with the lands adjoining, were added to the other
possessions of the Byron family.[7] The favourite upon whom these
spoils of the ancient religion were conferred, was the grand-nephew
of the gallant soldier who fought by the side of Richmond at Bosworth,
and is distinguished from the other knights of the same Christian name
in the family, by the title of "Sir John Byron the Little, with the
great beard." A portrait of this personage was one of the few family
pictures with which the walls of the abbey, while in the possession of
the noble poet, were decorated.

At the coronation of James I. we find another representative of the
family selected as an object of royal favour,--the grandson of Sir
John Byron the Little, being, on this occasion, made a knight of the
Bath. There is a letter to this personage, preserved in Lodge's
Illustrations, from which it appears, that notwithstanding all these
apparent indications of prosperity, the inroads of pecuniary
embarrassment had already begun to be experienced by this ancient
house. After counselling the new heir as to the best mode of getting
free of his debts, "I do therefore advise you," continues the
writer,[8] "that so soon as you have, in such sort as shall be fit,
finished your father's funerals, to dispose and disperse that great
household, reducing them to the number of forty or fifty, at the most,
of all sorts; and, in my opinion, it will be far better for you to
live for a time in Lancashire rather than in Notts, for many good
reasons that I can tell you when we meet, fitter for words than
writing."

From the following reign (Charles I.) the nobility of the family date
its origin. In the year 1643, Sir John Byron, great grandson of him
who succeeded to the rich domains of Newstead, was created Baron Byron
of Rochdale in the county of Lancaster; and seldom has a title been
bestowed for such high and honourable services as those by which this
nobleman deserved the gratitude of his royal master. Through almost
every page of the History of the Civil Wars, we trace his name in
connection with the varying fortunes of the king, and find him
faithful, persevering, and disinterested to the last. "Sir John
Biron," says the writer of Colonel Hutchinson's Memoirs, "afterwards
Lord Biron, and all his brothers, bred up in arms, and valiant men in
their own persons, were all passionately the king's." There is also,
in the answer which Colonel Hutchinson, when governor of Nottingham,
returned, on one occasion, to his cousin-german, Sir Richard Biron, a
noble tribute to the valour and fidelity of the family. Sir Richard
having sent to prevail on his relative to surrender the castle,
received for answer, that "except he found his own heart prone to such
treachery, he might consider there was, if nothing else, so much of a
Biron's blood in him, that he should very much scorn to betray or quit
a trust he had undertaken."

Such are a few of the gallant and distinguished personages, through
whom the name and honours of this noble house have been transmitted.
By the maternal side also Lord Byron had to pride himself on a line of
ancestry as illustrious as any that Scotland can boast,--his mother,
who was one of the Gordons of Gight, having been a descendant of that
Sir William Gordon who was the third son of the Earl of Huntley, by
the daughter of James I.

After the eventful period of the Civil Wars, when so many individuals
of the house of Byron distinguished themselves,--there having been no
less than seven brothers of that family on the field at Edgehill,--the
celebrity of the name appears to have died away for near a century. It
was about the year 1750, that the shipwreck and sufferings of Mr.
Byron[9] (the grandfather of the illustrious subject of these pages)
awakened, in no small degree, the attention and sympathy of the
public. Not long after, a less innocent sort of notoriety attached
itself to two other members of the family,--one, the grand-uncle of
the poet, and the other, his father. The former in the year 1765,
stood his trial before the House of Peers for killing, in a duel, or
rather scuffle, his relation and neighbour Mr. Chaworth; and the
latter, having carried off to the Continent the wife of Lord
Carmarthen, on the noble marquis obtaining a divorce from the lady,
married her. Of this short union one daughter only was the issue, the
Honourable Augusta Byron, now the wife of Colonel Leigh.

In reviewing thus cursorily the ancestors, both near and remote, of
Lord Byron, it cannot fail to be remarked how strikingly he combined
in his own nature some of the best and, perhaps, worst qualities that
lie scattered through the various characters of his predecessors,--the
generosity, the love of enterprise, the high-mindedness of some of the
better spirits of his race, with the irregular passions, the
eccentricity, and daring recklessness of the world's opinion, that so
much characterised others.

The first wife of the father of the poet having died in 1784, he, in
the following year, married Miss Catherine Gordon, only child and
heiress of George Gordon, Esq. of Gight. In addition to the estate of
Gight, which had, however, in former times, been much more extensive,
this lady possessed, in ready money, bank shares, &c. no
inconsiderable property; and it was known to be solely with a view of
relieving himself from his debts, that Mr. Byron paid his addresses to
her. A circumstance related, as having taken place before the marriage
of this lady, not only shows the extreme quickness and vehemence of
her feelings, but, if it be true that she had never at the time seen
Captain Byron, is not a little striking. Being at the Edinburgh
theatre one night when the character of Isabella was performed by Mrs.
Siddons, so affected was she by the powers of this great actress,
that, towards the conclusion of the play, she fell into violent fits,
and was carried out of the theatre, screaming loudly, "Oh, my Biron,
my Biron!"

On the occasion of her marriage there appeared a ballad by some Scotch
rhymer, which has been lately reprinted in a collection of the
"Ancient Ballads and Songs of the North of Scotland;" and as it bears
testimony both to the reputation of the lady for wealth, and that of
her husband for rakery and extravagance, it may be worth extracting:--

MISS GORDON OF GIGHT.

O whare are ye gaen, bonny Miss Gordon?
O whare are ye gaen, sae bonny an' braw?
Ye've married, ye've married wi' Johnny Byron,
To squander the lands o' Gight awa'.

This youth is a rake, frae England he's come;
The Scots dinna ken his extraction ava;
He keeps up his misses, his landlord he duns,
That's fast drawen' the lands o' Gight awa'.
O whare are ye gaen, &c.

The shooten' o' guns, an' rattlin' o' drums,
The bugle in woods, the pipes i' the ha',
The beagles a howlin', the hounds a growlin';
These soundings will soon gar Gight gang awa'.
O whare are ye gaen, &c.

Soon after the marriage, which took place, I believe, at Bath, Mr.
Byron and his lady removed to their estate in Scotland; and it was
not long before the prognostics of this ballad-maker began to be
realised. The extent of that chasm of debt, in which her fortune was
to be swallowed up, now opened upon the eyes of the ill-fated heiress.
The creditors of Mr. Byron lost no time in pressing their demands; and
not only was the whole of her ready money, bank shares, fisheries,
&c., sacrificed to satisfy them, but a large sum raised by mortgage on
the estate for the same purpose. In the summer of 1786, she and her
husband left Scotland, to proceed to France; and in the following year
the estate of Gight itself was sold, and the whole of the purchase
money applied to the further payment of debts,--with the exception of
a small sum vested in trustees for the use of Mrs. Byron, who thus
found herself, within the short space of two years, reduced from
competence to a pittance of 150_l._ per annum.[10]

From France Mrs. Byron returned to England at the close of the year
1787; and on the 22d of January, 1788, gave birth, in Holles Street,
London, to her first and only child, George Gordon Byron. The name of
Gordon was added in compliance with a condition imposed by will on
whoever should become husband of the heiress of Gight; and at the
baptism of the child, the Duke of Gordon, and Colonel Duff of
Fetteresso, stood godfathers.

In reference to the circumstance of his being an only child, Lord
Byron, in one of his journals, mentions some curious coincidences in
his family, which, to a mind disposed as his was to regard every thing
connected with himself as out of the ordinary course of events, would
naturally appear even more strange and singular than they are. "I have
been thinking," he says, "of an odd circumstance. My daughter (1), my
wife (2), my half-sister (3), my mother (4), my sister's mother (5),
my natural daughter (6), and myself (7), are, or were, all _only_
children. My sister's mother (Lady Conyers) had only my half-sister by
that second marriage, (herself, too, an only child,) and my father had
only me, an only child, by his second marriage with my mother, an only
child too. Such a complication of _only_ children, all tending to
_one_ family, is singular enough, and looks like fatality almost." He
then adds, characteristically, "But the fiercest animals have the
fewest numbers in their litters, as lions, tigers, and even elephants,
which are mild in comparison."

From London, Mrs. Byron proceeded with her infant to Scotland; and, in
the year 1790, took up her residence in Aberdeen, where she was soon
after joined by Captain Byron. Here for a short time they lived
together in lodgings at the house of a person named Anderson, in Queen
Street. But their union being by no means happy, a separation took
place between them, and Mrs. Byron removed to lodgings at the other
end of the street.[11] Notwithstanding this schism, they for some
time continued to visit, and even to drink tea with each other; but
the elements of discord were strong on both sides, and their
separation was, at last, complete and final. He would frequently,
however, accost the nurse and his son in their walks, and expressed a
strong wish to have the child for a day or two, on a visit with him.
To this request Mrs. Byron was, at first, not very willing to accede,
but, on the representation of the nurse, that "if he kept the boy one
night, he would not do so another," she consented. The event proved as
the nurse had predicted; on enquiring next morning after the child,
she was told by Captain Byron that he had had quite enough of his
young visitor, and she might take him home again.

It should be observed, however, that Mrs. Byron, at this period, was
unable to keep more than one servant, and that, sent as the boy was on
this occasion to encounter the trial of a visit, without the
accustomed superintendence of his nurse, it is not so wonderful that
he should have been found, under such circumstances, rather an
unmanageable guest. That as a child, his temper was violent, or rather
sullenly passionate, is certain. Even when in petticoats, he showed
the same uncontrollable spirit with his nurse, which he afterwards
exhibited when an author, with his critics. Being angrily reprimanded
by her, one day, for having soiled or torn a new frock in which he had
been just dressed, he got into one of his "silent rages" (as he
himself has described them), seized the frock with both his hands,
rent it from top to bottom, and stood in sullen stillness, setting his
censurer and her wrath at defiance.

But, notwithstanding this, and other such unruly outbreaks,--in which
he was but too much encouraged by the example of his mother, who
frequently, it is said, proceeded to the same extremities with her
caps, gowns, &c.,--there was in his disposition, as appears from the
concurrent testimony of nurses, tutors, and all who were employed
about him, a mixture of affectionate sweetness and playfulness, by
which it was impossible not to be attached; and which rendered him
then, as in his riper years, easily manageable by those who loved and
understood him sufficiently to be at once gentle and firm enough for
the task. The female attendant of whom we have spoken, as well as her
sister, Mary Gray, who succeeded her, gained an influence over his
mind against which he very rarely rebelled; while his mother, whose
capricious excesses, both of anger and of fondness, left her little
hold on either his respect or affection, was indebted solely to his
sense of filial duty for any small portion of authority she was ever
able to acquire over him.

By an accident which, it is said, occurred at the time of his birth,
one of his feet was twisted out of its natural position, and this
defect (chiefly from the contrivances employed to remedy it) was a
source of much pain and inconvenience to him during his early years.
The expedients used at this period to restore the limb to shape, were
adopted by the advice, and under the direction, of the celebrated John
Hunter, with whom Dr. Livingstone of Aberdeen corresponded on the
subject; and his nurse, to whom fell the task of putting on these
machines or bandages, at bedtime, would often, as she herself told my
informant, sing him to sleep, or tell him stories and legends, in
which, like most other children, he took great delight. She also
taught him, while yet an infant, to repeat a great number of the
Psalms; and the first and twenty-third Psalms were among the earliest
that he committed to memory. It is a remarkable fact, indeed, that
through the care of this respectable woman, who was herself of a very
religious disposition, he attained a far earlier and more intimate
acquaintance with the Sacred Writings than falls to the lot of most
young people. In a letter which he wrote to Mr. Murray, from Italy, in
1821 after requesting of that gentleman to send him, by the first
opportunity, a Bible, he adds--"Don't forget this, for I am a great
reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and
through before I was eight years old,--that is to say, the Old
Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a
pleasure. I speak as a boy, from the recollected impression of that
period at Aberdeen, in 1796."

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