Thomas Moore - Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)
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Thomas Moore >> Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.)
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"There is a picture of me in oil, to be sent down to Newstead soon.--I
wish the Miss P----s had something better to do than carry my
miniatures to Nottingham to copy. Now they have done it, you may ask
them to copy the others, which are greater favourites than my own. As
to money matters, I am ruined--at least till Rochdale is sold; and if
that does not turn out well, I shall enter into the Austrian or
Russian service--perhaps the Turkish, if I like their manners. The
world is all before me, and I leave England without regret, and
without a wish to revisit any thing it contains, except _yourself_,
and your present residence.
"P.S--Pray tell Mr. Rushton his son is well and doing well; so is
Murray, indeed better than I ever saw him; he will be back in about a
month. I ought to add the leaving Murray to my few regrets, as his age
perhaps will prevent my seeing him again. Robert I take with me; I
like him, because, like myself, he seems a friendless animal."
To those who have in their remembrance his poetical description of the
state of mind in which he now took leave of England, the gaiety and
levity of the letters I am about to give will appear, it is not
improbable, strange and startling. But, in a temperament like that of
Lord Byron, such bursts of vivacity on the surface are by no means
incompatible with a wounded spirit underneath;[116] and the light,
laughing tone that pervades these letters but makes the feeling of
solitariness that breaks out in them the more striking and affecting.
LETTER 35.
TO MR. HENRY DRURY.
"Falmouth, June 25. 1809.
My dear Drury,
"We sail to-morrow in the Lisbon packet, having been detained till now
by the lack of wind, and other necessaries. These being at last
procured, by this time to-morrow evening we shall be embarked on the
_v_ide _v_orld of _v_aters, _v_or all the _v_orld like Robinson
Crusoe. The Malta vessel not sailing for some weeks, we have
determined to go by way of Lisbon, and, as my servants term it, to see
'that there Portingale'--thence to Cadiz and Gibraltar, and so on our
old route to Malta and Constantinople, if so be that Captain Kidd, our
gallant commander, understands plain sailing and Mercator, and takes
us on our voyage all according to the chart.
"Will you tell Dr. Butler[117] that I have taken the treasure of a
servant, Friese, the native of Prussia Proper, into my service from
his recommendation. He has been all among the Worshippers of Fire in
Persia, and has seen Persepolis and all that.
"H---- has made woundy preparations for a book on his return; 100
pens, two gallons of japan ink, and several volumes of best blank, is
no bad provision for a discerning public. I have laid down my pen, but
have promised to contribute a chapter on the state of morals, &c. &c.
"The cock is crowing,
I must be going,
And can no more."
GHOST OF GAFFER THUMB.
"Adieu.--Believe me," &c. &c.
LETTER 36.
TO MR. HODGSON.
"Falmouth, June 25. 1809.
"My dear Hodgson,
"Before this reaches you, Hobhouse, two officers' wives, three
children, two waiting-maids, ditto subalterns for the troops, three
Portuguese esquires and domestics, in all nineteen souls, will have
sailed in the Lisbon packet, with the noble Captain Kidd, a gallant
commander as ever smuggled an anker of right Nantz.
"We are going to Lisbon first, because the Malta packet has sailed,
d'ye see?--from Lisbon to Gibraltar, Malta, Constantinople, and 'all
that,' as Orator Henley said, when he put the Church, and 'all that,'
in danger.
"This town of Falmouth, as you will partly conjecture, is no great
ways from the sea. It is defended on the sea-side by tway castles, St.
Maws and Pendennis, extremely well calculated for annoying every body
except an enemy. St. Maws is garrisoned by an able-bodied person of
fourscore, a widower. He has the whole command and sole management of
six most unmanageable pieces of ordnance, admirably adapted for the
destruction of Pendennis, a like tower of strength on the opposite
side of the Channel. We have seen St. Maws, but Pendennis they will
not let us behold, save at a distance, because Hobhouse and I are
suspected of having already taken St. Maws by a coup de main.
"The town contains many Quakers and salt fish--the oysters have a
taste of copper, owing to the soil of a mining country--the women
(blessed be the Corporation therefor!) are flogged at the cart's tail
when they pick and steal, as happened to one of the fair sex yesterday
noon. She was pertinacious in her behaviour, and damned the mayor.
"I don't know when I can write again, because it depends on that
experienced navigator, Captain Kidd, and the 'stormy winds that
(don't) blow' at this season. I leave England without regret--I shall
return to it without pleasure. I am like Adam, the first convict
sentenced to transportation, but I have no Eve, and have eaten no
apple but what was sour as a crab;--and thus ends my first, chapter.
Adieu.
"Yours," &c.
In this letter the following lively verses were enclosed:--
"Falmouth Roads, June 30. 1809.
"Huzza! Hodgson, we are going,
Our embargo's off at last;
Favourable breezes blowing
Bend the canvass o'er the mast.
From aloft the signal's streaming,
Hark! the farewell gun is fired,
Women screeching, tars blaspheming,
Tell us that our time's expired.
Here 's a rascal,
Come to task all,
Prying from the Custom-house;
Trunks unpacking,
Cases cracking,
Not a corner for a mouse
'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket,
Ere we sail on board the Packet.
"Now our boatmen quit their mooring.
And all hands must ply the oar;
Baggage from the quay is lowering,
We're impatient--push from shore.
'Have a care! that case holds liquor--
Stop the boat--I'm sick--oh Lord!'
'Sick, ma'am, damme, you'll be sicker
Ere you've been an hour on board.'
Thus are screaming
Men and women,
Gemmen, ladies, servants, Jacks;
Here entangling,
All are wrangling,
Stuck together close as wax.--
Such the general noise and racket,
Ere we reach the Lisbon Packet.
"Now we've reach'd her, lo! the captain,
Gallant Kidd, commands the crew;
Passengers their berths are clapt in,
Some to grumble, some to spew,
'Hey day! call you that a cabin?
Why 'tis hardly three feet square;
Not enough to stow Queen Mab in--
Who the deuce can harbour there?'
'Who, sir? plenty--
Nobles twenty
Did at once my vessel fill'--
'Did they? Jesus,
How you squeeze us!
Would to God they did so still:
Then I'd scape the heat and racket,
Of the good ship, Lisbon Packet.'
"Fletcher! Murray! Bob! where are you?
Stretch'd along the deck like logs--
Bear a hand, you jolly tar, you!
Here's a rope's end for the dogs.
H---- muttering fearful curses,
As the hatchway down he rolls;
Now his breakfast, now his verses,
Vomits forth--and damns our souls.
'Here's a stanza
On Braganza--
Help!'--'A couplet?'--'No, a cup
Of warm water.'--
'What's the matter?'
'Zounds! my liver's coming up;
I shall not survive the racket
Of this brutal Lisbon Packet.'
"Now at length we're off for Turkey,
Lord knows when we shall come back!
Breezes foul and tempests murky
May unship us in a crack.
But, since life at most a jest is,
As philosophers allow,
Still to laugh by far the best is,
Then laugh on--as I do now.
Laugh at all things,
Great and small things,
Sick or well, at sea or shore;
While we're quaffing,
Let's have laughing--
Who the devil cares for more?--
Some good wine! and who would lack it,
Ev'n on board the Lisbon Packet?
"BYRON."
On the second of July the packet sailed from Falmouth, and, after a
favourable passage of four days and a half, the voyagers reached
Lisbon, and took up their abode in that city.[118]
The following letters, from Lord Byron to his friend Mr. Hodgson,
though written in his most light and schoolboy strain, will give some
idea of the first impressions that his residence in Lisbon made upon
him. Such letters, too, contrasted with the noble stanzas on Portugal
in "Childe Harold," will show how various were the moods of his
versatile mind, and what different aspects it could take when in
repose or on the wing.
LETTER 37.
TO MR. HODGSON.
"Lisbon, July 16. 1809.
"Thus far have we pursued our route, and seen all sorts of marvellous
sights, palaces, convents, &c.;--which, being to be heard in my
friend Hobhouse's forthcoming Book of Travels, I shall not anticipate
by smuggling any account whatsoever to you in a private and
clandestine manner. I must just observe, that the village of Cintra in
Estremadura is the most beautiful, perhaps, in the world.
"I am very happy here, because I loves oranges, and talk bad Latin to
the monks, who understand it, as it is like their own,--and I goes
into society (with my pocket-pistols), and I swims in the Tagus all
across at once, and I rides on an ass or a mule, and swears
Portuguese, and have got a diarrhoea and bites from the musquitoes.
But what of that? Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a
pleasuring.
"When the Portuguese are pertinacious, I say, 'Carracho!'--the great
oath of the grandees, that very well supplies the place of
'Damme,'--and, when dissatisfied with my neighbour, I pronounce him
'Ambra di merdo.' With these two phrases, and a third, 'Avra bouro,'
which signifieth 'Get an ass,' I am universally understood to be a
person of degree and a master of languages. How merrily we lives that
travellers be!--if we had food and raiment. But in sober sadness, any
thing is better than England, and I am infinitely amused with my
pilgrimage as far as it has gone.
"To-morrow we start to ride post near 400 miles as far as Gibraltar,
where we embark for Melita and Byzantium. A letter to Malta will find
me, or to be forwarded, if I am absent. Pray embrace the Drury and
Dwyer, and all the Ephesians you encounter. I am writing with Butler's
donative pencil, which makes my bad hand worse. Excuse illegibility.
"Hodgson! send me the news, and the deaths and defeats and capital
crimes and the misfortunes of one's friends; and let us hear of
literary matters, and the controversies and the criticisms. All this
will be pleasant--'Suave mari magno,' &c. Talking of that, I have been
sea-sick, and sick of the sea.
"Adieu. Yours faithfully," &c.
LETTER 38.
TO MR. HODGSON.
"Gibraltar, August 6. 1809.
"I have just arrived at this place after a journey through Portugal,
and a part of Spain, of nearly 500 miles. We left Lisbon and travelled
on horseback[119] to Seville and Cadiz, and thence in the Hyperion
frigate to Gibraltar. The horses are excellent--we rode seventy miles
a day. Eggs and wine, and hard beds, are all the accommodation we
found, and, in such torrid weather, quite enough. My health is better
than in England.
"Seville is a fine town, and the Sierra Morena, part of which we
crossed, a very sufficient mountain; but damn description, it is
always disgusting. Cadiz, sweet Cadiz!--it is the first spot in the
creation. The beauty of its streets and mansions is only excelled by
the loveliness of its inhabitants. For, with all national prejudice, I
must confess the women of Cadiz are as far superior to the English
women in beauty as the Spaniards are inferior to the English in every
quality that dignifies the name of man. Just as I began to know the
principal persons of the city, I was obliged to sail.
"You will not expect a long letter after my riding so far 'on hollow
pampered jades of Asia.' Talking of Asia puts me in mind of Africa,
which is within five miles of my present residence. I am going over
before I go on to Constantinople.
"Cadiz is a complete Cythera. Many of the grandees who have left
Madrid during the troubles reside there, and I do believe it is the
prettiest and cleanest town in Europe. London is filthy in the
comparison. The Spanish women are all alike, their education the same.
The wife of a duke is, in information, as the wife of a peasant,--the
wife of a peasant, in manner, equal to a duchess. Certainly they are
fascinating; but their minds have only one idea, and the business of
their lives is intrigue.
"I have seen Sir John Carr at Seville and Cadiz, and, like Swift's
barber, have been down on my knees to beg he would not put me into
black and white. Pray remember me to the Drurys and the Davies, and
all of that stamp who are yet extant.[120] Send me a letter and news
to Malta. My next epistle shall be from Mount Caucasus or Mount Sion.
I shall return to Spain before I see England, for I am enamoured of
the country.
Adieu, and believe me," &c.
In a letter to Mrs. Byron, dated a few days later, from Gibraltar, he
recapitulates the same account of his progress, only dwelling rather
more diffusely on some of the details. Thus, of Cintra and Mafra:--"To
make amends for this,[121] the village of Cintra, about fifteen miles
from the capital, is, perhaps in every respect, the most delightful in
Europe; it contains beauties of every description, natural and
artificial. Palaces and gardens rising in the midst of rocks,
cataracts, and precipices; convents on stupendous heights--a distant
view of the sea and the Tagus; and, besides (though that is a
secondary consideration), is remarkable as the scene of Sir H.D.'s
Convention.[122] It unites in itself all the wildness of the western
highlands, with the verdure of the south of France. Near this place,
about ten miles to the right, is the palace of Mafra, the boast of
Portugal, as it might be of any other country, in point of
magnificence without elegance. There is a convent annexed; the monks,
who possess large revenues, are courteous enough, and understand
Latin, so that we had a long conversation: they have a large library,
and asked me if the _English_ had _any books_ in their country?"
An adventure which he met with at Seville, characteristic both of the
country and of himself, is thus described in the same letter to Mrs.
Byron:--
"We lodged in the house of two Spanish unmarried ladies, who possess
_six_ houses in Seville, and gave me a curious specimen of Spanish
manners. They are women of character, and the eldest a fine woman, the
youngest pretty, but not so good a figure as Donna Josepha. The
freedom of manner, which is general here, astonished me not a little;
and in the course of further observation, I find that reserve is not
the characteristic of the Spanish belles, who are, in general, very
handsome, with large black eyes, and very fine forms. The eldest
honoured your _unworthy_ son with very particular attention, embracing
him with great tenderness at parting (I was there but three days),
after cutting off a lock of his hair, and presenting him with one of
her own, about three feet in length, which I send, and beg you will
retain till my return. Her last words were, 'Adios, tu hermoso! me
gusto mucho.'--'Adieu, you pretty fellow! you please me much.' She
offered me a share of her apartment, which my _virtue_ induced me to
decline; she laughed, and said I had some English "amante" (lover),
and added that she was going to be married to an officer in the
Spanish army."
Among the beauties of Cadiz, his imagination, dazzled by the
attractions of the many, was on the point, it would appear from the
following, of being fixed by _one_:--
"Cadiz, sweet Cadiz, is the most delightful town I ever beheld, very
different from our English cities in every respect except cleanliness
(and it is as clean as London), but still beautiful and full of the
finest women in Spain, the Cadiz belles being the Lancashire witches
of their land. Just as I was introduced and began to like the
grandees, I was forced to leave it for this cursed place; but before I
return to England I will visit it again.
"The night before I left it, I sat in the box at the opera, with
admiral ----'s family, an aged wife and a fine daughter, Sennorita
----. The girl is very pretty, in the Spanish style; in my opinion, by
no means inferior to the English in charms, and certainly superior in
fascination. Long, black hair, dark languishing eyes, clear olive
complexions, and forms more graceful in motion than can be conceived
by an Englishman used to the drowsy listless air of his countrywomen,
added to the most becoming dress, and, at the same time, the most
decent in the world, render a Spanish beauty irresistible.
"Miss ---- and her little brother understood a little French, and,
after regretting my ignorance of the Spanish, she proposed to become
my preceptress in that language. I could only reply by a low bow, and
express my regret that I quitted Cadiz too soon to permit me to make
the progress which would doubtless attend my studies under so charming
a directress. I was standing at the back of the box, which resembles
our Opera boxes, (the theatre is large and finely decorated, the music
admirable,) in the manner which Englishmen generally adopt, for fear
of incommoding the ladies in front, when this fair Spaniard
dispossessed an old woman (an aunt or a duenna) of her chair, and
commanded me to be seated next herself, at a tolerable distance from
her mamma. At the close of the performance I withdrew, and was
lounging with a party of men in the passage, when, _en passant_, the
lady turned round and called me, and I had the honour of attending her
to the admiral's mansion. I have an invitation on my return to Cadiz,
which I shall accept if I repass through the country on my return from
Asia."
To these adventures, or rather glimpses of adventures, which he met
with in his hasty passage through Spain, he adverted, I recollect,
briefly, in the early part of his "Memoranda;" and it was the younger,
I think, of his fair hostesses at Seville, whom he there described
himself as making earnest love to, with the help of a dictionary.
"For some time," he said, "I went on prosperously both as a linguist
and a lover,[123] till at length, the lady took a fancy to a ring
which I wore, and set her heart on my giving it to her, as a pledge of
my sincerity. This, however, could not be;--anything but the ring, I
declared, was at her service, and much more than its value,--but the
ring itself I had made a vow never to give away." The young Spaniard
grew angry as the contention went on, and it was not long before the
lover became angry also; till, at length, the affair ended by their
separating unsuccessful on both sides. "Soon after this," said he, "I
sailed for Malta, and there parted with both my heart and ring."
In the letter from Gibraltar, just cited, he adds--"I am going over to
Africa to-morrow; it is only six miles from this fortress. My next
stage is Cagliari in Sardinia, where I shall be presented to his
majesty. I have a most superb uniform as a court-dress, indispensable
in travelling." His plan of visiting Africa was, however,
relinquished. After a short stay at Gibraltar, during which he dined
one day with Lady Westmoreland, and another with General Castanos, he,
on the 19th of August, took his departure for Malta, in the packet,
having first sent Joe Murray and young Rushton back to England,--the
latter being unable, from ill health, to accompany him any further.
"Pray," he says to his mother, "show the lad every kindness, as he is
my great favourite."[124]
He also wrote a letter to the father of the boy, which gives so
favourable an impression of his thoughtfulness and kindliness that I
have much pleasure in being enabled to introduce it here.
LETTER 39.
TO MR. RUSHTON.
"Gibraltar, August 15. 1809.
"Mr. Rushton,
"I have sent Robert home with Mr. Murray, because the country which I
am about to travel through is in a state which renders it unsafe,
particularly for one so young. I allow you to deduct five-and-twenty
pounds a year for his education for three years, provided I do not
return before that time, and I desire he may be considered as in my
service. Let every care be taken of him, and let him be sent to
school. In case of my death I have provided enough in my will to
render him independent. He has behaved extremely well, and has
travelled a great deal for the time of his absence. Deduct the expense
of his education from your rent.
"BYRON."
It was the fate of Lord Byron, throughout life, to meet, wherever he
went, with persons who, by some tinge of the extraordinary in their
own fates or characters, were prepared to enter, at once, into full
sympathy with his; and to this attraction, by which he drew towards
him all strange and eccentric spirits, he owed some of the most
agreeable connections of his life, as well as some of the most
troublesome. Of the former description was an intimacy which he now
cultivated during his short sojourn at Malta. The lady with whom he
formed this acquaintance was the same addressed by him under the name
of "Florence" in Childe Harold; and in a letter to his mother from
Malta, he thus describes her in prose:--"This letter is committed to
the charge of a very extraordinary woman, whom you have doubtless
heard of, Mrs. S---- S----, of whose escape the Marquis de Salvo
published a narrative a few years ago. She has since been shipwrecked,
and her life has been from its commencement so fertile in remarkable
incidents that in a romance they would appear improbable. She was born
at Constantinople, where her father, Baron H----, was Austrian
ambassador; married unhappily, yet has never been impeached in point
of character; excited the vengeance of Buonaparte by a part in some
conspiracy; several times risked her life; and is not yet twenty-five.
She is here on her way to England, to join her husband, being obliged
to leave Trieste, where she was paying a visit to her mother, by the
approach of the French, and embarks soon in a ship of war. Since my
arrival here. I have had scarcely any other companion. I have found
her very pretty, very accomplished, and extremely eccentric.
Buonaparte is even now so incensed against her, that her life would be
in some danger if she were taken prisoner a second time."
The tone in which he addresses this fair heroine in Childe Harold is
(consistently with the above dispassionate account of her) that of the
purest admiration and interest, unwarmed by any more ardent
sentiment:--
"Sweet Florence! could another ever share
This wayward, loveless heart, it would be thine:
But, check'd by every tie, I may not dare
To cast a worthless offering at thy shrine,
Nor ask so dear a breast to feel one pang for mine.
"Thus Harold deem'd as on that lady's eye
He look'd, and met its beam without a thought,
Save admiration, glancing harmless by," &c. &c.
In one so imaginative as Lord Byron, who, while he infused so much of
his life into his poetry, mingled also not a little of poetry with his
life, it is difficult, in unravelling the texture of his feelings, to
distinguish at all times between the fanciful and the real. His
description here, for instance, of the unmoved and "loveless heart,"
with which he contemplated even the charms of this attractive person,
is wholly at variance, not only with the anecdote from his "Memoranda"
which I have recalled, but with the statements in many of his
subsequent letters, and, above all, with one of the most graceful of
his lesser poems, purporting to be addressed to this same lady during
a thunder-storm, on his road to Zitza.[125]
Notwithstanding, however, these counter evidences, I am much disposed
to believe that the representation of the state of heart in the
foregoing extract from Childe Harold may be regarded as the true one;
and that the notion of his being in love was but a dream that sprung
up afterwards, when the image of the fair Florence had become
idealised in his fancy, and every remembrance of their pleasant hours
among "Calypso's isles" came invested by his imagination with the warm
aspect of love. It will be recollected that to the chilled and sated
feelings which early indulgence, and almost as early disenchantment,
had left behind, he attributes in these verses the calm and
passionless regard, with which even attractions like those of Florence
were viewed by him. That such was actually his distaste, at this
period, to all real objects of love or passion (however his fancy
could call up creatures of its own to worship) there is every reason
to believe; and the same morbid indifference to those pleasures he had
once so ardently pursued still continued to be professed by him on his
return to England. No anchoret, indeed, could claim for himself much
more apathy towards all such allurements than he did at that period.
But to be _thus_ saved from temptation was a dear-bought safety, and,
at the age of three-and-twenty, satiety and disgust are but melancholy
substitutes for virtue.
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