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

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

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The malformation of his foot was, even at this childish age, a subject
on which he showed peculiar sensitiveness. I have been told by a
gentleman of Glasgow, that the person who nursed his wife, and who
still lives in his family, used often to join the nurse of Byron when
they were out with their respective charges, and one day said to her,
as they walked together, "What a pretty boy Byron is! what a pity he
has such a leg!" On hearing this allusion to his infirmity, the
child's eyes flashed with anger, and striking at her with a little
whip which he held in his hand, he exclaimed impatiently, "Dinna speak
of it!" Sometimes, however, as in after life, he could talk
indifferently and even jestingly of this lameness; and there being
another little boy in the neighbourhood, who had a similar defect in
one of his feet, Byron would say, laughingly, "Come and see the twa
laddies with the twa club feet going up the Broad Street."

Among many instances of his quickness and energy at this age, his
nurse mentioned a little incident that one night occurred, on her
taking him to the theatre to see the "Taming of the Shrew." He had
attended to the performance, for some time, with silent interest; but,
in the scene between Catherine and Petruchio, where the following
dialogue takes place,--

_Cath._ I know it is the moon.
_Pet._ Nay, then, you lie,--it is the blessed sun,--

little Geordie (as they called the child), starting from his seat,
cried out boldly, "But I say it is the moon, sir."

The short visit of Captain Byron to Aberdeen has already been
mentioned, and he again passed two or three months in that city,
before his last departure for France. On both occasions, his chief
object was to extract still more money, if possible, from the
unfortunate woman whom he had beggared; and so far was he successful,
that, during his last visit, narrow as were her means, she contrived
to furnish him with the money necessary for his journey to
Valenciennes,[12] where, in the following year, 1791, he died. Though
latterly Mrs. Byron would not see her husband, she entertained, it is
said, a strong affection for him to the last; and on those occasions,
when the nurse used to meet him in her walks, would enquire of her
with the tenderest anxiety as to his health and looks. When the
intelligence of his death, too, arrived, her grief, according to the
account of this same attendant, bordered on distraction, and her
shrieks were so loud as to be heard in the street. She was, indeed, a
woman full of the most passionate extremes, and her grief and
affection were bursts as much of temper as of feeling. To mourn at
all, however, for such a husband was, it must be allowed, a most
gratuitous stretch of generosity. Having married her, as he openly
avowed, for her fortune alone, he soon dissipated this, the solitary
charm she possessed for him, and was then unmanful enough to taunt her
with the inconveniences of that penury which his own extravagance had
occasioned.

When not quite five years old, young Byron was sent to a day-school at
Aberdeen, taught by Mr. Bowers,[13] and remained there, with some
interruptions, during a twelvemonth, as appears by the following
extract from the day-book of the school:--

George Gordon Byron.
19th November, 1792.
19th November, 1793--paid one guinea.

The terms of this school for reading were only five shillings a
quarter, and it was evidently less with a view to the boy's advance in
learning than as a cheap mode of keeping him quiet that his mother had
sent him to it. Of the progress of his infantine studies at Aberdeen,
as well under Mr. Bowers as under the various other persons that
instructed him, we have the following interesting particulars
communicated by himself, in a sort of journal which he once began,
under the title of "My Dictionary," and which is preserved in one of
his manuscript books.

"For several years of my earliest childhood, I was in that city, but
have never revisited it since I was ten years old. I was sent, at five
years old, or earlier, to a school kept by a Mr. Bowers, who was
called '_Bodsy_ Bowers,' by reason of his dapperness. It was a school
for both sexes. I learned little there except to repeat by rote the
first lesson of monosyllables ('God made man'--'Let us love him'), by
hearing it often repeated, without acquiring a letter. Whenever proof
was made of my progress, at home, I repeated these words with the most
rapid fluency; but on turning over a new leaf, I continued to repeat
them, so that the narrow boundaries of my first year's accomplishments
were detected, my ears boxed, (which they did not deserve, seeing it
was by ear only that I had acquired my letters,) and my intellects
consigned to a new preceptor. He was a very devout, clever, little
clergyman, named Ross, afterwards minister of one of the kirks
(_East_, I think). Under him I made astonishing progress; and I
recollect to this day his mild manners and good-natured pains-taking.
The moment I could read, my grand passion was _history_, and, why I
know not, but I was particularly taken with the battle near the Lake
Regillus in the Roman History, put into my hands the first. Four years
ago, when standing on the heights of Tusculum, and looking down upon
the little round lake that was once Regillus, and which dots the
immense expanse below, I remembered my young enthusiasm and my old
instructor. Afterwards I had a very serious, saturnine, but kind young
man, named Paterson, for a tutor. He was the son of my shoemaker, but
a good scholar, as is common with the Scotch. He was a rigid
Presbyterian also. With him I began Latin in 'Ruddiman's Grammar,'
and continued till I went to the 'Grammar School, (_Scotice_, 'Schule;
_Aberdonice_, 'Squeel,') where I threaded all the classes to the
_fourth_, when I was recalled to England (where I had been hatched) by
the demise of my uncle. I acquired this handwriting, which I can
hardly read myself, under the fair copies of Mr. Duncan of the same
city: I don't think he would plume himself much upon my progress.
However, I wrote much better then than I have ever done since. Haste
and agitation of one kind or another have quite spoilt as pretty a
scrawl as ever scratched over a frank. The grammar-school might
consist of a hundred and fifty of all ages under age. It was divided
into five classes, taught by four masters, the chief teaching the
fourth and fifth himself. As in England, the fifth, sixth forms, and
monitors, are heard by the head masters."

Of his class-fellows at the grammar-school there are many, of course,
still alive, by whom he is well remembered;[14] and the general
impression they retain of him is, that he was a lively, warm-hearted,
and high-spirited boy--passionate and resentful, but affectionate and
companionable with his schoolfellows--to a remarkable degree venturous
and fearless, and (as one of them significantly expressed it) "always
more ready to give a blow than take one." Among many anecdotes
illustrative of this spirit, it is related that once, in returning
home from school, he fell in with a boy who had on some former
occasion insulted him, but had then got off unpunished--little Byron,
however, at the time, promising to "pay him off" whenever they should
meet again. Accordingly, on this second encounter, though there were
some other boys to take his opponent's part, he succeeded in
inflicting upon him a hearty beating. On his return home, breathless,
the servant enquired what he had been about, and was answered by him
with a mixture of rage and humour, that he had been paying a debt, by
beating a boy according to promise; for that he was a Byron, and would
never belie his motto, "_Trust Byron_."

He was, indeed, much more anxious to distinguish himself among his
school-fellows by prowess in all sports[15] and exercises, than by
advancement in learning. Though quick, when he could be persuaded to
attend, or had any study that pleased him, he was in general very low
in the class, nor seemed ambitious of being promoted any higher. It is
the custom, it seems, in this seminary, to invert, now and then, the
order of the class, so as to make the highest and lowest boys change
places,--with a view, no doubt, of piquing the ambition of both. On
these occasions, and only these, Byron was sometimes at the head, and
the master, to banter him, would say, "Now, George, man, let me see
how soon you'll be at the foot again."[16]

During this period, his mother and he made, occasionally, visits among
their friends, passing some time at Fetteresso, the seat of his
godfather, Colonel Duff, (where the child's delight with a humorous
old butler, named Ernest Fidler, is still remembered,) and also at
Banff, where some near connections of Mrs. Byron resided.

In the summer of the year 1796, after an attack of scarlet-fever, he
was removed by his mother for change of air into the Highlands; and it
was either at this time, or in the following year, that they took up
their residence at a farm-house in the neighbourhood of Ballater, a
favourite summer resort for health and gaiety, about forty miles up
the Dee from Aberdeen. Though this house, where they still show with
much pride the bed in which young Byron slept, has become naturally a
place of pilgrimage for the worshippers of genius, neither its own
appearance, nor that of the small bleak valley, in which it stands, is
at all worthy of being associated with the memory of a poet. Within a
short distance of it, however, all those features of wildness and
beauty, which mark the course of the Dee through the Highlands, may be
commanded. Here the dark summit of Lachin-y-gair stood towering before
the eyes of the future bard; and the verses in which, not many years
afterwards, he commemorated this sublime object, show that, young as
he was, at the time, its "frowning glories" were not unnoticed by
him.[17]

Ah, there my young footsteps in infancy wandered,
My cap was the bonnet, my cloak was the plaid;
On chieftains long perish'd my memory ponder'd
As daily I strode through the pine-cover'd glade.
I sought not my home till the day's dying glory
Gave place to the rays of the bright polar-star;
For Fancy was cheer'd by traditional story,
Disclosed by the natives of dark Loch-na-gar.

To the wildness and grandeur of the scenes, among which his childhood
was passed, it is not unusual to trace the first awakening of his
poetic talent. But it may be questioned whether this faculty was ever
so produced. That the charm of scenery, which derives its chief power
from fancy and association, should be much felt at an age when fancy
is yet hardly awake, and associations but few, can with difficulty,
even making every allowance for the prematurity of genius, be
conceived. The light which the poet sees around the forms of nature is
not so much in the objects themselves as in the eye that contemplates
them; and Imagination must first be able to lend a glory to such
scenes, before she can derive inspiration _from_ them. As materials,
indeed, for the poetic faculty, when developed, to work upon, these
impressions of the new and wonderful retained from childhood, and
retained with all the vividness of recollection which belongs to
genius, may form, it is true, the purest and most precious part of
that aliment, with which the memory of the poet feeds his imagination.
But still, it is the newly-awakened power within him that is the
source of the charm;--it is the force of fancy alone that, acting upon
his recollections, impregnates, as it were, all the past with poesy.
In this respect, such impressions of natural scenery as Lord Byron
received in his childhood must be classed with the various other
remembrances which that period leaves behind--of its innocence, its
sports, its first hopes and affections--all of them reminiscences
which the poet afterwards converts to his use, but which no more
_make_ the poet than--to apply an illustration of Byron's own--the
honey can be said to make the bee that treasures it.

When it happens--as was the case with Lord Byron in Greece--that the
same peculiar features of nature, over which Memory has shed this
reflective charm, are reproduced before the eyes under new and
inspiring circumstances, and with all the accessories which an
imagination, in its full vigour and wealth, can lend them, then,
indeed, do both the past and present combine to make the enchantment
complete; and never was there a heart more borne away by this
confluence of feelings than that of Byron. In a poem, written about a
year or two before his death,[18] he traces all his enjoyment of
mountain scenery to the impressions received during his residence in
the Highlands; and even attributes the pleasure which he experienced
in gazing upon Ida and Parnassus, far less to classic remembrances,
than to those fond and deep-felt associations by which they brought
back the memory of his boyhood and Lachin-y-gair.

He who first met the Highland's swelling blue,
Will love each peak that shows a kindred hue,
Hail in each crag a friend's familiar face,
And clasp the mountain in his mind's embrace.
Long have I roam'd through lands which are not mine,
Adored the Alp, and loved the Apennine,
Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep
Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the deep:
But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all
Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall;
The infant rapture still survived the boy,
And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy,
Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount,
And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount.

In a note appended to this passage, we find him falling into that sort
of anachronism in the history of his own feelings, which I have above
adverted to as not uncommon, and referring to childhood itself that
love of mountain prospects, which was but the after result of his
imaginative recollections of that period.

"From this period" (the time of his residence in the Highlands) "I
date my love of mountainous countries. I can never forget the effect,
a few years afterwards in England, of the only thing I had long seen,
even in miniature, of a mountain, in the Malvern Hills. After I
returned to Cheltenham, I used to watch them every afternoon at
sunset, with a sensation which I cannot describe." His love of
solitary rambles, and his taste for exploring in all directions, led
him not unfrequently so far, as to excite serious apprehensions for
his safety. While at Aberdeen, he used often to steal from home
unperceived;--sometimes he would find his way to the sea-side; and
once, after a long and anxious search, they found the adventurous
little rover struggling in a sort of morass or marsh, from which he
was unable to extricate himself.

In the course of one of his summer excursions up Dee-side, he had an
opportunity of seeing still more of the wild beauties of the Highlands
than even the neighbourhood of their residence at Ballatrech afforded,
--having been taken by his mother through the romantic passes that
lead to Invercauld, and as far up as the small waterfall, called the
Linn of Dee. Here his love of adventure had nearly cost him his life.
As he was scrambling along a declivity that overhung the fall, some
heather caught his lame foot, and he fell. Already he was rolling
downward, when the attendant luckily caught hold of him, and was but
just in time to save him from being killed. It was about this period,
when he was not quite eight years old, that a feeling partaking more
of the nature of love than it is easy to believe possible in so young
a child, took, according to his own account, entire possession of his
thoughts, and showed how early, in this passion, as in most others,
the sensibilities of his nature were awakened.[19] The name of the
object of this attachment was Mary Duff; and the following passage
from a Journal, kept by him in 1813, will show how freshly, after an
interval of seventeen years, all the circumstances of this early love
still lived in his memory:--

"I have been thinking lately a good deal of Mary Duff. How very odd
that I should have been so utterly, devotedly fond of that girl, at an
age when I could neither feel passion, nor know the meaning of the
word. And the effect!--My mother used always to rally me about this
childish amour; and, at last, many years after, when I was sixteen,
she told me one day, 'Oh, Byron, I have had a letter from Edinburgh,
from Miss Abercromby, and your old sweetheart Mary Duff is married to
a Mr. Co^e.' And what was my answer? I really cannot explain or
account for my feelings at that moment; but they nearly threw me into
convulsions, and alarmed my mother so much, that after I grew better,
she generally avoided the subject--to _me_--and contented herself with
telling it to all her acquaintance. Now, what could this be? I had
never seen her since her mother's faux-pas at Aberdeen had been the
cause of her removal to her grandmother's at Banff; we were both the
merest children. I had and have been attached fifty times since that
period; yet I recollect all we said to each other, all our caresses,
her features, my restlessness, sleeplessness, my tormenting my
mother's maid to write for me to her, which she at last did, to quiet
me. Poor Nancy thought I was wild, and, as I could not write for
myself, became my secretary. I remember, too, our walks, and the
happiness of sitting by Mary, in the children's apartment, at their
house not far from the Plain-stones at Aberdeen, while her lesser
sister Helen played with the doll, and we sat gravely making love, in
our way.

"How the deuce did all this occur so early? where could it originate?
I certainly had no sexual ideas for years afterwards; and yet my
misery, my love for that girl were so violent, that I sometimes doubt
if I have ever been really attached since. Be that as it may, hearing
of her marriage several years after was like a thunder-stroke--it
nearly choked me--to the horror of my mother and the astonishment and
almost incredulity of every body. And it is a phenomenon in my
existence (for I was not eight years old) which has puzzled, and will
puzzle me to the latest hour of it; and lately, I know not why, the
_recollection_ (_not_ the attachment) has recurred as forcibly as
ever. I wonder if she can have the least remembrance of it or me? or
remember her pitying sister Helen for not having an admirer too? How
very pretty is the perfect image of her in my memory--her brown, dark
hair, and hazel eyes; her very dress! I should be quite grieved to see
_her now_; the reality, however beautiful, would destroy, or at least
confuse, the features of the lovely Peri which then existed in her,
and still lives in my imagination, at the distance of more than
sixteen years. I am now twenty-five and odd months....

"I think my mother told the circumstances (on my hearing of her
marriage) to the Parkynses, and certainly to the Pigot family, and
probably mentioned it in her answer to Miss A., who was well
acquainted with my childish _penchant_, and had sent the news on
purpose for _me_,--and thanks to her!

"Next to the beginning, the conclusion has often occupied my
reflections, in the way of investigation. That the facts are thus,
others know as well as I, and my memory yet tells me so, in more than
a whisper. But, the more I reflect, the more I am bewildered to assign
any cause for this precocity of affection."

Though the chance of his succession to the title of his ancestors was
for some time altogether uncertain--there being, so late as the year
1794, a grandson of the fifth lord still alive--his mother had, from
his very birth, cherished a strong persuasion that he was destined not
only to be a lord, but "a great man." One of the circumstances on
which she founded this belief was, singularly enough, his
lameness;--for what reason it is difficult to conceive, except that,
possibly (having a mind of the most superstitious cast), she had
consulted on the subject some village fortune-teller, who, to ennoble
this infirmity in her eyes, had linked the future destiny of the child
with it.

By the death of the grandson of the old lord at Corsica in 1794, the
only claimant, that had hitherto stood between little George and the
immediate succession to the peerage, was removed; and the increased
importance which this event conferred upon them was felt not only by
Mrs. Byron, but by the young future Baron of Newstead himself. In the
winter of 1797, his mother having chanced, one day, to read part of a
speech spoken in the House of Commons, a friend who was present said
to the boy, "We shall have the pleasure, some time or other, of
reading your speeches in the House of Commons."--"I hope not," was his
answer: "if you read any speeches of mine, it will be in the House of
Lords."

The title, of which he thus early anticipated the enjoyment, devolved
to him but too soon. Had he been left to struggle on for ten years
longer, as plain George Byron, there can be little doubt that his
character would have been, in many respects, the better for it. In the
following year his grand-uncle, the fifth Lord Byron, died at Newstead
Abbey, having passed the latter years of his strange life in a state
of austere and almost savage seclusion. It is said, that the day after
little Byron's accession to the title, he ran up to his mother and
asked her, "whether she perceived any difference in him since he had
been made a lord, as he perceived none himself:"--a quick and natural
thought; but the child little knew what a total and talismanic change
had been wrought in all his future relations with society, by the
simple addition of that word before his name. That the event, as a
crisis in his life, affected him, even at that time, may be collected
from the agitation which he is said to have manifested on the
important morning, when his name was first called out in school with
the title of "Dominus" prefixed to it. Unable to give utterance to the
usual answer "adsum," he stood silent amid the general stare of his
school-fellows, and, at last, burst into tears.

The cloud, which, to a certain degree, undeservedly, his unfortunate
affray with Mr. Chaworth had thrown upon the character of the late
Lord Byron, was deepened and confirmed by what it, in a great measure,
produced,--the eccentric and unsocial course of life to which he
afterwards betook himself. Of his cruelty to Lady Byron, before her
separation from him, the most exaggerated stories are still current in
the neighbourhood; and it is even believed that, in one of his fits of
fury, he flung her into the pond at Newstead. On another occasion, it
is said, having shot his coachman for some disobedience of orders, he
threw the corpse into the carriage to his lady, and, mounting the box,
drove off himself. These stories are, no doubt, as gross fictions as
some of those of which his illustrious successor was afterwards made
the victim; and a female servant of the old lord, still alive, in
contradicting both tales as scandalous fabrications, supposes the
first to have had its origin in the following circumstance:--A young
lady, of the name of Booth, who was on a visit at Newstead, being one
evening with a party who were diverting themselves in front of the
abbey, Lord Byron by accident pushed her into the basin which receives
the cascades; and out of this little incident, as my informant very
plausibly conjectures, the tale of his attempting to drown Lady Byron
may have been fabricated.

After his lady had separated from him, the entire seclusion in which
he lived gave full scope to the inventive faculties of his neighbours.
There was no deed, however dark or desperate, that the village gossips
were not ready to impute to him; and two grim images of satyrs, which
stood in his gloomy garden, were, by the fears of those who had caught
a glimpse of them, dignified by the name of "the old lord's devils."
He was known always to go armed; and it is related that, on some
particular occasion, when his neighbour, the late Sir John Warren, was
admitted to dine with him, there was a case of pistols placed, as if
forming a customary part of the dinner service, on the table.

During his latter years, the only companions of his solitude--besides
that colony of crickets, which he is said to have amused himself with
rearing and feeding[20]--were old Murray, afterwards the favourite
servant of his successor, and the female domestic, whose authority I
have just quoted, and who, from the station she was suspected of being
promoted to by her noble master, received generally through the
neighbourhood the appellation of "Lady Betty."

Though living in this sordid and solitary style, he was frequently, as
it appears, much distressed for money; and one of the most serious of
the injuries inflicted by him upon the property was his sale of the
family estate of Rochdale in Lancashire, of which the mineral produce
was accounted very valuable. He well knew, it is said, at the time of
the sale, his inability to make out a legal title; nor is it supposed
that the purchasers themselves were unacquainted with the defect of
the conveyance. But they contemplated, and, it seems, actually did
realise, an indemnity from any pecuniary loss, before they could, in
the ordinary course of events, be dispossessed of the property. During
the young lord's minority, proceedings were instituted for the
recovery of this estate, and as the reader will learn hereafter with
success.

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