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

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"At the time of the marriage, Miss Gordon was possessed of about 3000
_l._ in money, two shares of the Aberdeen Banking Company, the estates
of Gight and Monkshill, and the superiority of two salmon fishings on
Dee. Soon after the arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Byron Gordon in Scotland,
it appeared that Mr. Byron had involved himself very deeply in debt,
and his creditors commenced legal proceedings for the recovery of
their money. The cash in hand was soon paid away,--the bank shares
were disposed of at 600 _l._ (now worth 5000 _l._)--timber on the estate
was cut down and sold to the amount of 1500_l._--the farm of Monkshill
and superiority of the fishings, affording a freehold qualification,
were disposed of at 480_l._; and, in addition to these sales, within a
year after the marriage, 8000_l._ was borrowed upon a mortgage on the
estate, granted by Mrs. Byron Gordon to the person who lent the money.

"In March, 1786, a contract of marriage in the Scotch form was drawn
up and signed by the parties. In the course of the summer of that
year, Mr. and Mrs. Byron left Gight, and never returned to it; the
estate being, in the following year, sold to Lord Haddo for the sum of
17,850_l._, the whole of which was applied to the payment of Mr.
Byron's debts, with the exception of 1122_l._, which remained as a
burden on the estate, (the interest to be applied to paying a jointure
of 55_l._ 11_s._ 1_d._ to Mrs. Byron's grandmother, the principal
reverting, at her death, to Mrs. Byron,) and 3000_l._ vested in
trustees for Mrs. Byron's separate use, which was lent to Mr.
Carsewell of Ratharllet, in Fifeshire."

"A strange occurrence," says another of my informants, "took place
previous to the sale of the lands. All the doves left the house of
Gight and came to Lord Haddo's, and so did a number of herons, which
had built their nests for many years in a wood on the banks of a large
loch, called the Hagberry Pot. When this was told to Lord Haddo, he
pertinently replied, 'Let the birds come, and do them no harm, for the
land will soon follow;' which it actually did."]

[Footnote 11: It appears that she several times changed her residence
during her stay at Aberdeen, as there are two other houses pointed
out, where she lodged for some time; one situated in Virginia Street,
and the other, the house of a Mr. Leslie, I think, in Broad Street.]

[Footnote 12: By her advances of money to Mr. Byron (says an authority
I have already cited) on the two occasions when he visited Aberdeen,
as well as by the expenses incurred in furnishing the floor occupied
by her, after his death, in Broad Street, she got in debt to the
amount of 300 _l._, by paying the interest on which her income was
reduced to 135 _l._ On this, however, she contrived to live without
increasing her debt; and on the death of her grandmother, when she
received the 122 _l._ set apart for that lady's annuity, discharged the
whole.]

[Footnote 13: In Long Acre. The present master of this school is Mr.
David Grant, the ingenious editor of a collection of "Battles and War
Pieces," and of a work of much utility, entitled "Class Book of Modern
Poetry."]

[Footnote 14: The old porter, too, at the College, "minds weel" the
little boy, with the red jacket and nankeen trowsers, whom he has so
often turned out of the College court-yard.]

[Footnote 15: "He was," says one of my informants, "a good hand at
marbles, and could drive one farther than most boys. He also excelled
at 'Bases,' a game which requires considerable swiftness of foot."]

[Footnote 16: On examining the quarterly lists kept at the
grammar-school of Aberdeen, in which the names of the boys are set
down according to the station each holds in his class, it appears that
in April of the year 1794, the name of Byron, then in the second
class, stands twenty-third in a list of thirty-eight boys. In the
April of 1798, however, he had risen to be fifth in the fourth class,
consisting of twenty-seven boys, and had got ahead of several of his
contemporaries, who had previously always stood before him.]

[Footnote 17: Notwithstanding the lively recollections expressed in
this poem, it is pretty certain, from the testimony of his nurse, that
he never was at the mountain itself, which stood some miles distant
from his residence, more than twice.]

[Footnote 18: The Island.]

[Footnote 19: Dante, we know, was but nine years old when, at a
May-day festival, he saw and fell in love with Beatrice; and Alfieri,
who was himself a precocious lover, considers such early sensibility
to be an unerring sign of a soul formed for the fine arts:--"Effetti,"
he says, in describing the feelings of his own first love, "che poche
persone intendono, e pochissime provano: ma a quei soli pochissimi e
concesso l' uscir dalla folla volgare in tutte le umane arti." Canova
used to say, that he perfectly well remembered having been in love
when but five years old.]

[Footnote 20: To this Lord Byron used to add, on the authority of old
servants of the family, that on the day of their patron's death, these
crickets all left the house simultaneously, and in such numbers, that
it was impossible to cross the hall without treading on them.]

[Footnote 21: The correct reading of this legend is, I understand, as
follows:--

"Brig o' Balgounie, _wight_ (strong) is thy wa';
Wi' a wife's ae son on a mare's ae foal,
Down shall thou fa'."
]

[Footnote 22: In a letter addressed lately by Mr. Sheldrake to the
editor of a Medical Journal, it is stated that the person of the same
name who attended Lord Byron at Dulwich owed the honour of being
called in to a mistake, and effected nothing towards the remedy of the
limb. The writer of the letter adds that he was himself consulted by
Lord Byron four or five years afterwards, and though unable to
undertake the cure of the defect, from the unwillingness of his noble
patient to submit to restraint or confinement, was successful in
constructing a sort of shoe for the foot, which in some degree
alleviated the inconvenience under which he laboured.]

[Footnote 23: "Quoique," says Alfieri, speaking of his school-days,
"je fusse le plus petit de tons les _grands_ qui se trouvaient au
second appartement ou j'etais descendu, e'etait precisement mon
inferiorite de taille, d'age, et de force, qui me donnait plus de
courage, et m'engageait a me distinguer."]

[Footnote 24: The following is Lord Byron's version of this touching
narrative; and it will be felt, I think, by every reader, that this is
one of the instances in which poetry must be content to yield the palm
to prose. There is a pathos in the last sentences of the seaman's
recital, which the artifices of metre and rhyme were sure to disturb,
and which, indeed, no verses, however beautiful, could half so
naturally and powerfully express:--

"There were two fathers in this ghastly crew,
And with them their two sons, of whom the one
Was more robust and hardy to the view,
But he died early; and when he was gone,
His nearest messmate told his sire, who threw
One glance on him, and said, 'Heaven's will be done,
I can do nothing,' and he saw him thrown
Into the deep without a tear or groan.

"The other father had a weaklier child,
Of a soft cheek, and aspect delicate;
But the boy bore up long, and with a mild
And patient spirit held aloof his fate;
Little be said, and now and then he smiled,
As if to win a part from off the weight
He saw increasing on his father's heart,
With the deep, deadly thought, that they must part.

"And o'er him bent his sire, and never raised
His eyes from off his face, but wiped the foam
From his pale lips, and ever on him gazed,
And when the wish'd-for shower at length was come,
And the boy's eyes, which the dull film half glazed,
Brighten'd, and for a moment seem'd to roam,
He squeezed from out a rag some drops of rain
Into his dying child's mouth--but in vain.

"The boy expired--the father held the clay,
And look'd upon it long, and when at last
Death left no doubt, and the dead burden lay
Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope were past,
He watch'd it wistfully, until away
'Twas borne by the rude wave wherein 'twas cast:
Then he himself sunk down all dumb and shivering,
And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering."

DON JUAN, CANTO II.

In the collection of "Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea," to which Lord
Byron so skilfully had recourse for the technical knowledge and facts
out of which he has composed his own powerful description, the reader
will find the account of the loss of the Juno here referred to.]

[Footnote 25: This elegy is in his first (unpublished) volume.]

[Footnote 26: See page 25.]

[Footnote 27: For the display of his declamatory powers, on the
speech-days, he selected always the most vehement passages,--such as
the speech of Zanga over the body of Alonzo, and Lear's address to the
storm. On one of these public occasions, when it was arranged that he
should take the part of Drances, and young Peel that of Turnus, Lord
Byron suddenly changed his mind, and preferred the speech of
Latinus,--fearing, it was supposed, some ridicule from the
inappropriate taunt of Turnus, "Ventosa in lingua, _pedibusque
fugacibus istis_."]

[Footnote 28: His letters to Mr. Sinclair, in return, are unluckily
lost,--one of them, as this gentleman tells me, having been highly
characteristic of the jealous sensitiveness of his noble schoolfellow,
being written under the impression of some ideal slight, and
beginning, angrily, "Sir."]

[Footnote 29: On a leaf of one of his note-books, dated 1808, I find the
following passage from Marmontel, which no doubt struck him as applicable
to the enthusiasm of his own youthful friendships:--"L'amitie, qui dans le
monde est a peine un sentiment, est une passion dans les
cloitres."--_Contes Moraux_.]

[Footnote 30: Mr. D'Israeli, in his ingenious work "On the Literary
Character," has given it as his opinion, that a disinclination to
athletic sports and exercises will be, in general, found among the
peculiarities which mark a youthful genius. In support of this notion
he quotes Beattie, who thus describes his ideal minstrel:--

"Concourse, and noise, and toil, he ever fled,
Nor cared to mingle in the clamorous fray
Of squabbling imps, but to the forest sped."

His highest authority, however, is Milton, who says of himself,

"When I was yet a child, no childish play
To me was pleasing."

Such general rules, however, are as little applicable to the
dispositions of men of genius as to their powers. If, in the instances
which Mr. D'Israeli adduces an indisposition to bodily exertion was
manifested, as many others may be cited in which the directly opposite
propensity was remarkable. In war, the most turbulent of exercises,
AEschylus, Dante, Camoens, and a long list of other poets,
distinguished themselves; and, though it may be granted that Horace
was a bad rider, and Virgil no tennis-player, yet, on the other hand,
Dante was, we know, a falconer as well as swordsman; Tasso, expert
both as swordsman and dancer; Alfieri, a great rider; Klopstock, a
skaiter; Cowper, famous, in his youth, at cricket and foot-ball; and
Lord Byron, pre-eminent in all sorts of exercises.]

[Footnote 31: "At eight or nine years of age the boy goes to school.
From that moment he becomes a stranger in his father's house. The
course of parental kindness is interrupted. The smiles of his mother,
those tender admonitions, and the solicitous care of both his parents,
are no longer before his eyes--year after year he feels himself more
detached from them, till at last he is so effectually weaned from the
connection, as to find himself happier anywhere than in their
company."--_Cowper, Letters._]

[Footnote 32: Even previously to any of these school friendships, he
had formed the same sort of romantic attachment to a boy of his own
age, the son of one of his tenants at Newstead; and there are two or
three of his most juvenile poems, in which he dwells no less upon the
inequality than the warmth of this friendship. Thus:--

"Let Folly smile, to view the names
Of thee and me in friendship twined;
Yet Virtue will have greater claims
To love, than rank with Vice combined.

"And though unequal is thy fate,
Since title deck'd my higher birth,
Yet envy not this gaudy state,
Thine is the pride of modest worth.

"Our souls at least congenial meet,
Nor can thy lot my rank disgrace;
Our intercourse is not less sweet
Since worth of rank supplies the place.

"November, 1802."]

[Footnote 33: There are, in other letters of the same writer, some
curious proofs of the passionate and jealous sensibility of Byron.
From one of them, for instance, we collect that he had taken offence
at his young friend's addressing him "my dear Byron," instead of "my
dearest;" and from another, that his jealousy had been awakened by
some expressions of regret which his correspondent had expressed at
the departure of Lord John Russell for Spain:--

"You tell me," says the young letter-writer, "that you never knew me
in such an agitation as I was when I wrote my last letter; and do you
not think I had reason to be so? I received a letter from you on
Saturday, telling me you were going abroad for six years in March, and
on Sunday John Russell set off for Spain. Was not that sufficient to
make me rather melancholy? But how can you possibly imagine that I was
more agitated on John Russell's account, who is gone for a few months,
and from whom I shall hear constantly, than at your going for six
years to travel over most part of the world, when I shall hardly ever
hear from you, and perhaps may never see you again?

"It has very much hurt me your telling me that you might be excused if
you felt rather jealous at my expressing more sorrow for the departure
of the friend who was with me, than of that one who was absent. It is
quite impossible you can think I am more sorry for John's absence than
I shall be for yours;--I shall therefore finish the subject."]

[Footnote 34: To this tomb he thus refers in the "Childish
Recollections," as printed in his first unpublished volume:--

"Oft when, oppress'd with sad, foreboding gloom,
I sat reclined upon our favourite tomb."
]

[Footnote 35: I find this circumstance, of his having occasionally
slept at the Hut, though asserted by one of the old servants, much
doubted by others.]

[Footnote 36: It may possibly have been the recollection of these
pictures that suggested to him the following lines in the Siege of
Corinth:--

"Like the figures on arras that gloomily glare,
Stirr'd by the breath of the wintry air,
So seen by the dying lamp's fitful light,
Lifeless, but life-like and awful to sight;
As they seem, through the dimness, about to come down
From the shadowy wall where their images frown."
]

[Footnote 37: Among the unpublished verses of his in my possession, I
find the following fragment, written not long after this period:--

"Hills of Annesley, bleak and barren,
Where my thoughtless childhood stray'd,
How the northern tempests, warring,
Howl above thy tufted shade!

"Now no more, the hours beguiling,
Former favourite haunts I see;
Now no more my Mary smiling,
Makes ye seem a heaven to me."
]

[Footnote 38: The lady's husband, for some time, took her family
name.]

[Footnote 39: These stanzas, I have since found, are not Lord Byron's,
but the production of Lady Tuite, and are contained in a volume
published by her Ladyship in the year 1795.--(_Second edition._)]

[Footnote 40: Gibbon, in speaking of public schools, says--"The mimic
scene of a rebellion has displayed, in their true colours, the
ministers and patriots of the rising generation." Such prognostics,
however, are not always to be relied on;--the mild, peaceful Addison
was, when at school, the successful leader of a _barring-out_.]

[Footnote 41: This anecdote, which I have given on the testimony of
one of Lord Byron's schoolfellows, Doctor Butler himself assures me
has but very little foundation in fact.--(_Second Edition_.)]

[Footnote 42: "It is deplorable to consider the loss which children
make of their time at most schools, employing, or rather casting away,
six or seven years in the learning of words only, and that very
imperfectly."--_Cowley, Essays_.

"Would not a Chinese, who took notice of our way of breeding, be apt
to imagine that all our young gentlemen were designed to be teachers
and professors of the dead languages of foreign countries, and not to
be men of business in their own?"--_Locke on Education_.]

[Footnote 43: "A finished scholar may emerge from the head of
Westminster or Eton in total ignorance of the business and
conversation of English gentlemen in the latter end of the eighteenth
century."--_Gibbon_.]

[Footnote 44: "Byron, Harrow on the Hill, Middlesex, Alumnus Scholae;
Lyonensis primus in anno Domini 1801, Ellison Duce."

"Monitors, 1801.--Ellison, Royston, Hunxman, Rashleigh, Rokeby,
Leigh."]

[Footnote 45: "Drury's Pupils, 1804.--Byron, Drury, Sinclair, Hoare,
Bolder, Annesley, Calvert, Strong, Acland, Gordon, Drummond."]

[Footnote 46: During one of the Harrow vacations, he passed some time
in the house of the Abbe de Roufigny, in Took's-court, for the purpose
of studying the French language; but he was, according to the Abbe's
account, very little given to study, and spent most of his time in
boxing, fencing, &c. to the no small disturbance of the reverend
teacher and his establishment.]

[Footnote 47: Between superior and inferior, "whose fortunes (as he
expresses it) comprehend the one and the other."]

[Footnote 48: A gentleman who has since honourably distinguished
himself by his philanthropic plans and suggestions for that most
important object, the amelioration of the condition of the poor.]

[Footnote 49: In a suit undertaken for the recovery of the Rochdale
property.]

[Footnote 50: This precious pencilling is still, of course,
preserved.]

[Footnote 51: The verses "To a beautiful Quaker," in his first volume,
were written at Harrowgate.]

[Footnote 52: A horse of Lord Byron's:--the other horse that he had
with him at this time was called Sultan.]

[Footnote 53: The favourite dog, on which Lord Byron afterwards wrote
the well-known epitaph.]

[Footnote 54: Lord Byron and Dr. Pigot continued to be correspondents
for some time, but, after their parting this autumn, they never met
again.]

[Footnote 55: Of this edition, which was in quarto, and consisted but
of a few sheets, there are but two, or, at the utmost, three copies in
existence.]

[Footnote 56: His valet, Frank.]

[Footnote 57: Of this "Mary," who is not to be confounded either with
the heiress of Annesley, or "Mary" of Aberdeen, all I can record is,
that she was of an humble, if not equivocal, station in life,--that
she had long, light golden hair, of which he used to show a lock, as
well as her picture, among his friends; and that the verses in his
"Hours of Idleness," entitled "To Mary, on receiving her Picture,"
were addressed to her.]

[Footnote 58: Here the imperfect sheet ends.]

[Footnote 59: Though always fond of music, he had very little skill in
the performance of it. "It is very odd," he said, one day, to this
lady,--"I sing much better to your playing than to any one
else's."--"That is," she answered, "because I play to your
singing."--In which few words, by the way, the whole secret of a
skilful accompanier lies.]

[Footnote 60: Cricketing, too, was one of his most favourite sports;
and it was wonderful, considering his lameness, with what speed he
could run. "Lord Byron (says Miss ----, in a letter, to her brother,
from Southwell) is just gone past the window with his bat on his
shoulder to cricket, which he is as fond of as ever."]

[Footnote 61: In one of Miss ----'s letters, the following notice of
these canine feuds occurs:--"Boatswain has had another battle with
Tippoo at the House of Correction, and came off conqueror. Lord B.
brought Bo'sen to our window this morning, when Gilpin, who is almost
always here, got into an amazing fury with him."]

[Footnote 62: "It was the custom of Burns," says Mr. Lockhart, in his
Life of that poet, "to read at table."]

[Footnote 63: "I took to reading by myself," says Pope, "for which I
had a very great eagerness and enthusiasm;... I followed every where,
as my fancy led me, and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields
and woods, just as they fell in his way. These five or six years I
still look upon as the happiest part of my life." It appears, too,
that he was himself aware of the advantages which this free course of
study brought with it:--"Mr. Pope," says Spence, "thought himself the
better, in some respects, for not having had a regular education. He
(as he observed in particular) read originally for the sense, whereas
we are taught, for so many years, to read only for words."]

[Footnote 64: Before Chatterton was twelve years old, he wrote a
catalogue, in the same manner as Lord Byron, of the books he had
already read, to the number of seventy. Of these the chief subjects
were history and divinity.]

[Footnote 65: The perfect purity with which the Greeks wrote their own
language, was, with justice, perhaps, attributed by themselves to
their entire abstinence from the study of any other. "If they became
learned," says Ferguson, "it was only by studying what they themselves
had produced."]

[Footnote 66: The only circumstance I know, that bears even remotely
on the subject of this poem, is the following. About a year or two
before the date affixed to it, he wrote to his mother, from Harrow (as
I have been told by a person to whom Mrs. Byron herself communicated
the circumstance), to say, that he had lately had a good deal of
uneasiness on account of a young woman, whom he knew to have been a
favourite of his late friend, Curzon, and who, finding herself, after
his death, in a state of progress towards maternity, had declared Lord
Byron was the father of her child. This, he positively assured his
mother, was not the case; but, believing, as he did firmly, that the
child belonged to Curzon, it was his wish that it should be brought up
with all possible care, and he, therefore, entreated that his mother
would have the kindness to take charge of it. Though such a request
might well (as my informant expresses it) have discomposed a temper
more mild than Mrs. Byron's, she notwithstanding answered her son in
the kindest terms, saying that she would willingly receive the child
as soon as it was born, and bring it up in whatever manner he desired.
Happily, however, the infant died almost immediately, and was thus
spared the being a tax on the good nature of any body.]

[Footnote 67: In this practice of dating his juvenile poems he
followed the example of Milton, who (says Johnson), "by affixing the
dates to his first compositions, a boast of which the learned Politian
had given him an example, seems to commend the earliness of his own
compositions to the notice of posterity."

The following trifle, written also by him in 1807, has never, as far
as I know, appeared in print:--

"EPITAPH ON JOHN ADAMS, OF SOUTHWELL, A CARRIER,

"WHO DIED OF DRUNKENNESS.

"John Adams lies here, of the parish of Southwell,
A _Carrier_, who _carried_ his can to his mouth well;
He _carried_ so much, and he _carried_ so fast,
He could _carry_ no more--so was _carried_ at last;
For, the liquor he drank being too much for one,
He could not _carry_ off,--so he 's now _carri-on_.

"B----, Sept. 1807."
]

[Footnote 68: Annesley is, of course, not forgotten among the
number:--

"And shall I here forget the scene,
Still nearest to my breast?
Rocks rise and rivers roll between
The rural spot which passion blest;
Yet, Mary, all thy beauties seem
Fresh as in Love's bewitching dream," &c. &c.
]

[Footnote 69: It appears from a passage in one of Miss ----'s letters
to her brother, that Lord Byron sent, through this gentleman, a copy
of his poems to Mr. Mackenzie, the author of the Man of Feeling:--"I
am glad you mentioned Mr. Mackenzie's having got a copy of Lord B.'s
poems, and what he thought of them--Lord B. was so _much_ pleased!"

In another letter, the fair writer says,--"Lord Byron desired me to
tell you that the reason you did not hear from him was because his
publication was not so forward as he had flattered himself it would
have been. I told him, 'he was no more to be depended on than a
woman,' which instantly brought the softness of that sex into his
countenance, for he blushed exceedingly."]

[Footnote 70: He was, indeed, a thorough boy, at this period, in every
respect:--"Next Monday" (says Miss ----) "is our great fair. Lord
Byron talks of it with as much pleasure as little Henry, and declares
he will ride in the round-about,--but I think he will change his
mind."]

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