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

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"As for England, it is long since I have heard from it. Every one at
all connected with my concerns is asleep, and you are my only
correspondent, agents excepted. I have really no friends in the world;
though all my old school companions are gone forth into that world,
and walk about there in monstrous disguises, in the garb of guardsmen,
lawyers, parsons, fine gentlemen, and such other masquerade dresses.
So, I here shake hands and cut with all these busy people, none of
whom write to me. Indeed I ask it not;--and here I am, a poor
traveller and heathenish philosopher, who hath perambulated the
greatest part of the Levant, and seen a great quantity of very
improvable land and sea, and, after all, am no better than when I set
out--Lord help me!

"I have been out fifteen months this very day, and I believe my
concerns will draw me to England soon; but of this I will apprise you
regularly from Malta. On all points Hobhouse will inform you, if you
are curious as to our adventures. I have seen some old English papers
up to the 15th of May. I see the 'Lady of the Lake' advertised. Of
course it is in his old ballad style, and pretty. After all, Scott is
the best of them. The end of all scribblement is to amuse, and he
certainly succeeds there. I long to read his new romance.

"And how does 'Sir Edgar?' and your friend Bland? I suppose you are
involved in some literary squabble. The only way is to despise all
brothers of the quill. I suppose you won't allow me to be an author,
but I contemn you all, you dogs!--I do.

"You don't know D----s, do you? He had a farce ready for the stage
before I left England, and asked me for a prologue, which I promised,
but sailed in such a hurry, I never penned a couplet. I am afraid to
ask after his drama, for fear it should be damned--Lord forgive me for
using such a word! but the pit, Sir, you know the pit--they will do
those things in spite of merit. I remember this farce from a curious
circumstance. When Drury Lane was burnt to the ground, by which
accident Sheridan and his son lost the few remaining shillings they
were worth, what doth my friend D---- do? Why, before the fire was
out, he writes a note to Tom Sheridan, the manager of this combustible
concern, to enquire whether this farce was not converted into fuel,
with about two thousand other unactable manuscripts, which of course
were in great peril, if not actually consumed. Now was not this
characteristic?--the ruling passions of Pope are nothing to it. Whilst
the poor distracted manager was bewailing the loss of a building only
worth 300,000 _l._, together with some twenty thousand pounds of rags
and tinsel in the tiring rooms, Bluebeard's elephants, and all
that--in comes a note from a scorching author, requiring at his hands
two acts and odd scenes of a farce!!

"Dear H., remind Drury that I am his well-wisher, and let Scrope
Davies be well affected towards me. I look forward to meeting you at
Newstead, and renewing our old champagne evenings with all the glee of
anticipation. I have written by every opportunity, and expect
responses as regular as those of the liturgy, and somewhat longer. As
it is impossible for a man in his senses to hope for happy days, let
us at least look forward to merry ones, which come nearest to the
other in appearance, if not in reality; and in such expectations,

I remain," &c.

He was a good deal weakened and thinned by his illness at Patras, and,
on his return to Athens, standing one day before a looking-glass, he
said to Lord Sligo--"How pale I look!--I should like, I think, to die
of a consumption."--"Why of a consumption?" asked his friend. "Because
then (he answered) the women would all say, 'See that poor Byron--how
interesting he looks in dying!'" In this anecdote,--which, slight as
it is, the relater remembered, as a proof of the poet's consciousness
of his own beauty,--may be traced also the habitual reference of his
imagination to that sex, which, however he affected to despise it,
influenced, more or less, the flow and colour of all his thoughts.

He spoke often of his mother to Lord Sligo, and with a feeling that
seemed little short of aversion. "Some time or other," he said, "I
will tell you _why_ I feel thus towards her."--A few days after, when
they were bathing together in the Gulf of Lepanto, he referred to this
promise, and, pointing to his naked leg and foot, exclaimed--"Look
there!--it is to her false delicacy at my birth I owe that deformity;
and yet, as long as I can remember, she has never ceased to taunt and
reproach me with it. Even a few days before we parted, for the last
time, on my leaving England, she, in one of her fits of passion,
uttered an imprecation upon me, praying that I might prove as ill
formed in mind as I am in body!" His look and manner, in relating this
frightful circumstance, can be conceived only by those who have ever
seen him in a similar state of excitement.

The little value he had for those relics of ancient art, in pursuit of
which he saw all his classic fellow-travellers so ardent, was, like
every thing he ever thought or felt, unreservedly avowed by him. Lord
Sligo having it in contemplation to expend some money in digging for
antiquities, Lord Byron, in offering to act as his agent, and to see
the money, at least, honestly applied, said--"You may safely trust
_me_--I am no dilettante. Your connoisseurs are all thieves; but I
care too little for these things ever to steal them."

The system of thinning himself, which he had begun before he left
England, was continued still more rigidly abroad. While at Athens, he
took the hot bath for this purpose, three times a week,--his usual
drink being vinegar and water, and his food seldom more than a little
rice.

Among the persons, besides Lord Sligo, whom he saw most of at this
time, were Lady Hester Stanhope and Mr. Bruce. One of the first
objects, indeed, that met the eyes of these two distinguished
travellers, on their approaching the coast of Attica, was Lord Byron,
disporting in his favourite element under the rocks of Cape Colonna.
They were afterwards made acquainted with each other by Lord Sligo;
and it was in the course, I believe, of their first interview, at his
table, that Lady Hester, with that lively eloquence for which she is
so remarkable, took the poet briskly to task for the depreciating
opinion, which, as she understood, he entertained of all female
intellect. Being but little inclined, were he even able, to sustain
such a heresy, against one who was in her own person such an
irresistible refutation of it, Lord Byron had no other refuge from the
fair orator's arguments than in assent and silence; and this well-bred
deference being, in a sensible woman's eyes, equivalent to concession,
they became, from thenceforward, most cordial friends. In recalling
some recollections of this period in his "Memoranda," after relating
the circumstance of his being caught bathing by an English party at
Sunium, he added, "This was the beginning of the most delightful
acquaintance which I formed in Greece." He then went on to assure Mr.
Bruce, if ever those pages should meet his eyes, that the days they
had passed together at Athens were remembered by him with pleasure.

During this period of his stay in Greece, we find him forming one of
those extraordinary friendships,--if attachment to persons so inferior
to himself can be called by that name,--of which I have already
mentioned two or three instances in his younger days, and in which the
pride of being a protector, and the pleasure of exciting gratitude,
seem to have constituted to his mind the chief, pervading charm. The
person, whom he now adopted in this manner, and from similar feelings
to those which had inspired his early attachments to the cottage-boy
near Newstead, and the young chorister at Cambridge, was a Greek
youth, named Nicolo Giraud, the son, I believe, of a widow lady, in
whose house the artist Lusieri lodged. In this young man he appears to
have taken the most lively, and even brotherly, interest;--so much so,
as not only to have presented to him, on their parting, at Malta, a
considerable sum of money, but to have subsequently designed for him,
as the reader will learn, a still more munificent, as well as
permanent, provision.

Though he occasionally made excursions through Attica and the Morea,
his head-quarters were fixed at Athens, where he had taken lodgings in
a Franciscan convent, and, in the intervals of his tours, employed
himself in collecting materials for those notices on the state of
modern Greece which he has appended to the second Canto of Childe
Harold. In this retreat, also, as if in utter defiance of the "genius
loci," he wrote his "Hints from Horace,"--a Satire which, impregnated
as it is with London life from beginning to end, bears the date,
"Athens, Capuchin Convent, March 12. 1811."

From the few remaining letters addressed to his mother, I shall
content myself with selecting the two following:--

LETTER 49.

TO MRS. BYRON.

"Athens, January 14, 1811.

"My dear Madam,

"I seize an occasion to write as usual, shortly, but frequently, as
the arrival of letters, where there exists no regular communication,
is, of course, very precarious. I have lately made several small tours
of some hundred or two miles about the Morea, Attica, &c., as I have
finished my grand giro by the Troad, Constantinople, &c., and am
returned down again to Athens. I believe I have mentioned to you more
than once that I swam (in imitation of Leander, though without his
lady) across the Hellespont, from Sestos to Abydos. Of this, and all
other particulars, F., whom I have sent home with papers, &c., will
apprise you. I cannot find that he is any loss; being tolerably master
of the Italian and modern Greek languages, which last I am also
studying with a master, I can order and discourse more than enough for
a reasonable man. Besides, the perpetual lamentations after beef and
beer, the stupid, bigoted contempt for every thing foreign, and
insurmountable incapacity of acquiring even a few words of any
language, rendered him, like all other English servants, an
incumbrance. I do assure you, the plague of speaking for him, the
comforts he required (more than myself by far), the pilaws (a Turkish
dish of rice and meat) which he could not eat, the wines which he
could not drink, the beds where he could not sleep, and the long list
of calamities, such as stumbling horses, want of _tea!!!_ &c., which
assailed him, would have made a lasting source of laughter to a
spectator, and inconvenience to a master. After all, the man is honest
enough, and, in Christendom, capable enough; but in Turkey, Lord
forgive me! my Albanian soldiers, my Tartars and Janissary, worked for
him and us too, as my friend Hobhouse can testify.

"It is probable I may steer homewards in spring; but to enable me to
do that, I must have remittances. My own funds would have lasted me
very well; but I was obliged to assist a friend, who, I know, will pay
me; but, in the mean time, I am out of pocket. At present, I do not
care to venture a winter's voyage, even if I were otherwise tired of
travelling; but I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at
mankind instead of reading about them, and the bitter effects of
staying at home with all the narrow prejudices of an islander, that I
think there should be a law amongst us, to set our young men abroad,
for a term, among the few allies our wars have left us.

"Here I see and have conversed with French, Italians, Germans, Danes,
Greeks, Turks, Americans, &c. &c. &c.; and without losing sight of my
own, I can judge of the countries and manners of others. Where I see
the superiority of England (which, by the by, we are a good deal
mistaken about in many things,) I am pleased, and where I find her
inferior, I am at least enlightened. Now, I might have stayed, smoked
in your towns, or fogged in your country, a century, without being
sure of this, and without acquiring any thing more useful or amusing
at home. I keep no journal, nor have I any intention of scribbling my
travels. I have done with authorship; and if, in my last production, I
have convinced the critics or the world I was something more than they
took me for, I am satisfied; nor will I hazard _that reputation_ by a
future effort. It is true I have some others in manuscript, but I
leave them for those who come after me; and, if deemed worth
publishing, they may serve to prolong my memory when I myself shall
cease to remember. I have a famous Bavarian artist taking some views
of Athens, &c. &c. for me. This will be better than scribbling, a
disease I hope myself cured of. I hope, on my return, to lead a quiet,
recluse life, but God knows and does best for us all; at least, so
they say, and I have nothing to object, as, on the whole, I have no
reason to complain of my lot. I am convinced, however, that men do
more harm to themselves than ever the devil could do to them. I trust
this will find you well, and as happy as we can be; you will, at
least, be pleased to hear I am so, and yours ever."

LETTER 50.

TO MRS. BYRON.

"Athens, February 28. 1811.

"Dear Madam,

"As I have received a firman for Egypt, &c., I shall proceed to that
quarter in the spring, and I beg you will state to Mr. H. that it is
necessary to further remittances. On the subject of Newstead, I answer
as before, _No._ If it is necessary to sell, sell Rochdale. Fletcher
will have arrived by this time with my letters to that purport. I will
tell you fairly, I have, in the first place, no opinion of funded
property; if, by any particular circumstances, I shall be led to adopt
such a determination, I will, at all events, pass my life abroad, as
my only tie to England is Newstead, and, that once gone, neither
interest nor inclination lead me northward. Competence in your country
is ample wealth in the East, such is the difference in the value of
money and the abundance of the necessaries of life; and I feel myself
so much a citizen of the world, that the spot where I can enjoy a
delicious climate, and every luxury, at a less expense than a common
college life in England, will always be a country to me; and such are
in fact the shores of the Archipelago. This then is the
alternative--if I preserve Newstead, I return; if I sell it, I stay
away. I have had no letters since yours of June, but I have written
several times, and shall continue, as usual, on the same plan.

Believe me, yours ever,

BYRON.

"P.S.--I shall most likely see you in the course of the summer, but,
of course, at such a distance, I cannot specify any particular
month." The voyage to Egypt, which he appears from this letter to
have contemplated, was, probably for want of the expected remittances,
relinquished; and, on the 3d of June, he set sail from Malta, in the
Volage frigate, for England, having, during his short stay at Malta,
suffered a severe attack of the tertian fever. The feelings with which
he returned home may be collected from the following melancholy
letters.

LETTER 51.

TO MR. HODGSON.

"Volage frigate, at sea, June 29. 1811.

"In a week, with a fair wind, we shall be at Portsmouth, and on the 2d
of July, I shall have completed (to a day) two years of peregrination,
from which I am returning with as little emotion as I set out. I
think, upon the whole, I was more grieved at leaving Greece than
England, which I am impatient to see, simply because I am tired of a
long voyage.

"Indeed, my prospects are not very pleasant. Embarrassed in my private
affairs, indifferent to public, solitary without the wish to be
social, with a body a little enfeebled by a succession of fevers, but
a spirit, I trust, yet unbroken, I am returning _home_ without a hope,
and almost without a desire. The first thing I shall have to encounter
will be a lawyer, the next a creditor, then colliers, farmers,
surveyors, and all the agreeable attachments to estates out of repair,
and contested coal-pits. In short, I am sick and sorry, and when I
have a little repaired my irreparable affairs, away I shall march,
either to campaign in Spain, or back again to the East, where I can
at least have cloudless skies and a cessation from impertinence.

"I trust to meet, or see you, in town, or at Newstead, whenever you
can make it convenient--I suppose you are in love and in poetry as
usual. That husband, H. Drury, has never written to me, albeit I have
sent him more than one letter;--but I dare say the poor man has a
family, and of course all his cares are confined to his circle.

'For children fresh expenses get,
And Dicky now for school is fit.'

WARTON.

If you see him, tell him I have a letter for him from Tucker, a
regimental chirurgeon and friend of his, who prescribed for me, ----
and is a very worthy man, but too fond of hard words. I should be too
late for a speech-day, or I should probably go down to Harrow. I
regretted very much in Greece having omitted to carry the Anthology
with me--I mean Bland and Merivale's.--What has Sir Edgar done? And
the Imitations and Translations--where are they? I suppose you don't
mean to let the public off so easily, but charge them home with a
quarto. For me, I am 'sick of fops, and poesy, and prate,' and shall
leave the 'whole Castilian state' to Bufo, or any body else. But you
are a sentimental and sensibilitous person, and will rhyme to the end
of the chapter. Howbeit, I have written some 4000 lines, of one kind
or another, on my travels.

"I need not repeat that I shall be happy to see you. I shall be in
town about the 8th, at Dorant's Hotel, in Albemarle Street, and
proceed in a few days to Notts., and thence to Rochdale on business.

"I am, here and there, yours," &c.

LETTER 52.

TO MRS. BYRON.

"Volage frigate, at sea, June 25. 1811.

"Dear Mother,

"This letter, which will be forwarded on our arrival at Portsmouth,
probably about the 4th of July, is begun about twenty-three days after
our departure from Malta. I have just been two years (to a day, on the
2d of July) absent from England, and I return to it with much the same
feelings which prevailed on my departure, viz. indifference; but
within that apathy I certainly do not comprise yourself, as I will
prove by every means in my power. You will be good enough to get my
apartments ready at Newstead; but don't disturb yourself, on any
account, particularly mine, nor consider me in any other light than as
a visiter. I must only inform you that for a long time I have been
restricted to an entire vegetable diet, neither fish nor flesh coming
within my regimen; so I expect a powerful stock of potatoes, greens,
and biscuit: I drink no wine. I have two servants, middle-aged men,
and both Greeks. It is my intention to proceed first to town, to see
Mr. H----, and thence to Newstead, on my way to Rochdale. I have only
to beg you will not forget my diet, which it is very necessary for me
to observe. I am well in health, as I have generally been, with the
exception of two agues, both of which I quickly got over.

"My plans will so much depend on circumstances, that I shall not
venture to lay down an opinion on the subject. My prospects are not
very promising, but I suppose we shall wrestle through life like our
neighbours; indeed, by H.'s last advices, I have some apprehension of
finding Newstead dismantled by Messrs. Brothers, &c., and he seems
determined to force me into selling it, but he will be baffled. I
don't suppose I shall be much pestered with visiters; but if I am, you
must receive them, for I am determined to have nobody breaking in upon
my retirement: you know that I never was fond of society, and I am
less so than before. I have brought you a shawl, and a quantity of
attar of roses, but these I must smuggle, if possible. I trust to find
my library in tolerable order.

"Fletcher is no doubt arrived. I shall separate the mill from Mr.
B----'s farm, for his son is too gay a deceiver to inherit both, and
place Fletcher in it, who has served me faithfully, and whose wife is
a good woman; besides, it is necessary to sober young Mr. B----, or he
will people the parish with bastards. In a word, if he had seduced a
dairy-maid, he might have found something like an apology; but the
girl is his equal, and in high life or low life reparation is made in
such circumstances. But I shall not interfere further than (like
Buonaparte) by dismembering Mr. B.'s _kingdom_, and erecting part of
it into a principality for field-marshal Fletcher! I hope you govern
my little _empire_ and its sad load of national debt with a wary hand.
To drop my metaphor, I beg leave to subscribe myself yours, &c.

"P.S.--This letter was written to be sent from Portsmouth, but, on
arriving there, the squadron was ordered to the Nore, from whence I
shall forward it. This I have not done before, supposing you might be
alarmed by the interval mentioned in the letter being longer than
expected between our arrival in port and my appearance at Newstead."

LETTER 53.

TO MR. HENRY DRURY.

"Volage frigate, off Ushant, July 17. 1811.

"My dear Drury,

"After two years' absence (on the 2d) and some odd days, I am
approaching your country. The day of our arrival you will see by the
outside date of my letter. At present, we are becalmed comfortably,
close to Brest Harbour;--I have never been so near it since I left
Duck Puddle. We left Malta thirty-four days ago, and have had a
tedious passage of it. You will either see or hear from or of me, soon
after the receipt of this, as I pass through town to repair my
irreparable affairs; and thence I want to go to Notts. and raise
rents, and to Lanes. and sell collieries, and back to London and pay
debts,--for it seems I shall neither have coals nor comfort till I go
down to Rochdale in person.

"I have brought home some marbles for Hobhouse;--for myself, four
ancient Athenian skulls,[141] dug out of sarcophagi--a phial of Attic
hemlock[142]--four live tortoises--a greyhound (died on the
passage)--two live Greek servants, one an Athenian, t'other a Yaniote,
who can speak nothing but Romaic and Italian--and _myself_, as Moses
in the Vicar of Wakefield says, slily, and I may say it too, for I
have as little cause to boast of my expedition as he had of his to the
fair.

"I wrote to you from the Cyanean Rocks to tell you I had swam from
Sestos to Abydos--have you received my letter? Hodgson I suppose is
four deep by this time. What would he have given to have seen, like
me, the _real Parnassus_, where I robbed the Bishop of Chrissae of a
book of geography!--but this I only call plagiarism, as it was done
within an hour's ride of Delphi."

END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: Published in two volumes, 4to.]

[Footnote 2: It is almost unnecessary to apprise the reader that the
paragraph at the bottom of p. 222. vol. iv. was written _before_ the
appearance of this extraordinary paper.]

[Footnote 3: From p. 4. to 11. vol. v. inclusive.]

[Footnote 4: In p. 232. vol. iv. however, the reader will find it
alluded to, and in terms such as conduct so disinterested deserves.]

[Footnote 5: June 12, 1828.]

[Footnote 6: "In the park of Horseley," says Thoroton, "there was a
castle, some of the ruins whereof are yet visible, called Horestan
Castle, which was the chief mansion of his (Ralph de Burun's)
successors."]

[Footnote 7: The priory of Newstead had been founded and dedicated to
God and the Virgin, by Henry II.; and its monks, who were canons
regular of the order of St. Augustine, appear to have been peculiarly
the objects of royal favour, no less in spiritual than in temporal
concerns. During the lifetime of the fifth Lord Byron, there was found
in the lake at Newstead,--where it is supposed to have been thrown for
concealment by the monks,--a large brass eagle, in the body of which,
on its being sent to be cleaned, was discovered a secret aperture,
concealing within it a number of old legal papers connected with the
rights and privileges of the foundation. At the sale of the old lord's
effects in 1776-7, this eagle, together with three candelabra, found
at the same time, was purchased by a watch-maker of Nottingham (by
whom the concealed manuscripts were discovered), and having from his
hands passed into those of Sir Richard Kaye, a prebendary of
Southwell, forms at present a very remarkable ornament of the
cathedral of that place. A curious document, said to have been among
those found in the eagle, is now in the possession of Colonel Wildman,
containing a grant of full pardon from Henry V. of every possible
crime (and there is a tolerably long catalogue enumerated) which the
monks might have committed previous to the 8th of December
preceding:--"_Murdris_, per ipsos _post decimum nonum diem Novembris_,
ultimo praeteritum perpetratis, si quae fuerint, _exceptis_."]

[Footnote 8: The Earl of Shrewsbury.]

[Footnote 9: Afterwards Admiral.]

[Footnote 10: The following particulars respecting the amount of Mrs.
Byron's fortune before marriage, and its rapid disappearance
afterwards, are, I have every reason to think, from the authentic
source to which I am indebted for them, strictly correct:--

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