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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At Newstead, both the mansion and the grounds around it were suffered
to fall helplessly into decay; and among the few monuments of either
care or expenditure which their lord left behind, were some masses of
rockwork, on which much cost had been thrown away, and a few
castellated buildings on the banks of the lake and in the woods. The
forts upon the lake were designed to give a naval appearance to its
waters, and frequently, in his more social days, he used to amuse
himself with sham fights,--his vessels attacking the forts, and being
cannonaded by them in return. The largest of these vessels had been
built for him at some seaport on the eastern coast, and, being
conveyed on wheels over the Forest to Newstead, was supposed to have
fulfilled one of the prophecies of Mother Shipton, which declared that
"when a ship laden with _ling_ should cross over Sherwood Forest, the
Newstead estate would pass from the Byron family." In Nottinghamshire,
"ling" is the term used for _heather_; and, in order to bear out
Mother Shipton and spite the old lord, the country people, it is said,
ran along by the side of the vessel, heaping it with heather all the
way.

This eccentric peer, it is evident, cared but little about the fate of
his descendants. With his young heir in Scotland he held no
communication whatever; and if at any time he happened to mention him,
which but rarely occurred, it was never under any other designation
than that of "the little boy who lives at Aberdeen."

On the death of his grand-uncle, Lord Byron having become a ward of
chancery, the Earl of Carlisle, who was in some degree connected with
the family, being the son of the deceased lord's sister, was appointed
his guardian; and in the autumn of 1798, Mrs. Byron and her son,
attended by their faithful Mary Gray, left Aberdeen for Newstead.
Previously to their departure, the furniture of the humble lodgings
which they had occupied was, with the exception of the plate and
linen, which Mrs. Byron took with her, sold, and the whole sum that
the effects of the mother of the Lord of Newstead yielded was 74_l._
17_s_. 7_d_.

From the early age at which Byron was taken to Scotland, as well as
from the circumstance of his mother being a native of that country, he
had every reason to consider himself--as, indeed, he boasts in Don
Juan--"half a Scot by birth, and bred a whole one." We have already
seen how warmly he preserved through life his recollection of the
mountain scenery in which he was brought up; and in the passage of Don
Juan, to which I have just referred, his allusion to the romantic
bridge of Don, and to other localities of Aberdeen, shows an equal
fidelity and fondness of retrospect:--

As Auld Lang Syne brings Scotland, one and all,
Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams,
The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall,
All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
Of what I _then dreamt_, clothed in their own pall,
Like Banquo's offspring;--floating past me seems
My childhood in this childishness of mine;
I care not--'tis a glimpse of "Auld Lang Syne."

He adds in a note, "The Brig of Don, near the 'auld town' of Aberdeen,
with its one arch and its black deep salmon stream, is in my memory as
yesterday. I still remember, though perhaps I may misquote the awful
proverb which made me pause to cross it, and yet lean over it with a
childish delight, being an only son, at least by the mother's side.
The saying, as recollected by me, was this, but I have never heard or
seen it since I was nine years of age:--

"'Brig of Balgounie, _black_'s your wa',
Wi' a wife's _ae son_, and a mear's ae foal,
Down ye shall fa'.'"[21]

To meet with an Aberdonian was, at all times, a delight to him; and
when the late Mr. Scott, who was a native of Aberdeen, paid him a
visit at Venice in the year 1819, in talking of the haunts of his
childhood, one of the places he particularly mentioned was
Wallace-nook, a spot where there is a rude statue of the Scottish
chief still standing. From first to last, indeed, these recollections
of the country of his youth never forsook him. In his early voyage
into Greece, not only the shapes of the mountains, but the kilts and
hardy forms of the Albanese,--all, as he says, "carried him back to
Morven;" and, in his last fatal expedition, the dress which he himself
chiefly wore at Cephalonia was a tartan jacket.

Cordial, however, and deep as were the impressions which he retained
of Scotland, he would sometimes in this, as in all his other amiable
feelings, endeavour perversely to belie his own better nature; and,
when under the excitement of anger or ridicule, persuade not only
others, but even himself, that the whole current of his feelings ran
directly otherwise. The abuse with which, in his anger against the
Edinburgh Review, he overwhelmed every thing Scotch, is an instance of
this temporary triumph of wilfulness; and, at any time, the least
association of ridicule with the country or its inhabitants was
sufficient, for the moment, to put all his sentiment to flight. A
friend of his once described to me the half playful rage, into which
she saw him thrown, one day, by a heedless girl, who remarked that she
thought he had a little of the Scotch accent. "Good God, I hope not!"
he exclaimed. "I'm sure I haven't. I would rather the whole d----d
country was sunk in the sea--I the Scotch accent!"

To such sallies, however, whether in writing or conversation, but
little weight is to be allowed,--particularly, in comparison with
those strong testimonies which he has left on record of his fondness
for his early home; and while, on his side, this feeling so indelibly
existed, there is, on the part of the people of Aberdeen, who consider
him as almost their fellow-townsman, a correspondent warmth of
affection for his memory and name. The various houses where he resided
in his youth are pointed out to the traveller; to have seen him but
once is a recollection boasted of with pride; and the Brig of Don,
beautiful in itself, is invested, by his mere mention of it, with an
additional charm. Two or three years since, the sum of five pounds was
offered to a person in Aberdeen for a letter which he had in his
possession, written by Captain Byron a few days before his death; and,
among the memorials of the young poet, which are treasured up by
individuals of that place, there is one which it would have not a
little amused himself to hear of, being no less characteristic a relic
than an old china saucer, out of which he had bitten a large piece, in
a fit of passion, when a child.

It was in the summer of 1798, as I have already said, that Lord Byron,
then in his eleventh year, left Scotland with his mother and nurse, to
take possession of the ancient seat of his ancestors. In one of his
latest letters, referring to this journey, he says, "I recollect Loch
Leven as it were but yesterday--I saw it in my way to England in
1798." They had already arrived at the Newstead toll-bar, and saw the
woods of the Abbey stretching out to receive them, when Mrs. Byron,
affecting to be ignorant of the place, asked the woman of the
toll-house--to whom that seat belonged? She was told that the owner of
it, Lord Byron, had been some months dead. "And who is the next heir?"
asked the proud and happy mother. "They say," answered the woman, "it
is a little boy who lives at Aberdeen."--"And this is he, bless him!"
exclaimed the nurse, no longer able to contain herself, and turning to
kiss with delight the young lord who was seated on her lap.

Even under the most favourable circumstances, such an early elevation
to rank would be but too likely to have a dangerous influence on the
character; and the guidance under which young Byron entered upon his
new station was, of all others, the least likely to lead him safely
through its perils and temptations. His mother, without judgment or
self-command, alternately spoiled him by indulgence, and irritated,
or--what was still worse--amused him by her violence. That strong
sense of the ridiculous, for which he was afterwards so remarkable,
and which showed itself thus early, got the better even of his fear of
her; and when Mrs. Byron, who was a short and corpulent person, and
rolled considerably in her gait, would, in a rage, endeavour to catch
him, for the purpose of inflicting punishment, the young urchin, proud
of being able to out-strip her, notwithstanding his lameness, would
run round the room, laughing like a little Puck, and mocking at all
her menaces. In a few anecdotes of his early life which he related in
his "Memoranda," though the name of his mother was never mentioned but
with respect, it was not difficult to perceive that the recollections
she had left behind--at least, those that had made the deepest
impression--were of a painful nature. One of the most striking
passages, indeed, in the few pages of that Memoir which related to his
early days, was where, in speaking of his own sensitiveness, on the
subject of his deformed foot, he described the feeling of horror and
humiliation that came over him, when his mother, in one of her fits of
passion, called him "a lame brat." As all that he had felt strongly
through life was, in some shape or other, reproduced in his poetry, it
was not likely that an expression such as this should fail of being
recorded. Accordingly we find, in the opening of his drama, "The
Deformed Transformed,"

_Bertha_. Out, hunchback!
_Arnold_. I was born so, mother!

It may be questioned, indeed, whether that whole drama was not
indebted for its origin to this single recollection.

While such was the character of the person under whose immediate eye
his youth was passed, the counteraction which a kind and watchful
guardian might have opposed to such example and influence was almost
wholly lost to him. Connected but remotely with the family, and never
having had any opportunity of knowing the boy, it was with much
reluctance that Lord Carlisle originally undertook the trust; nor can
we wonder that, when his duties as a guardian brought him acquainted
with Mrs. Byron, he should be deterred from interfering more than was
absolutely necessary for the child by his fear of coming into
collision with the violence and caprice of the mother.

Had even the character which the last lord left behind been
sufficiently popular to pique his young successor into an emulation of
his good name, such a salutary rivalry of the dead would have supplied
the place of living examples; and there is no mind in which such an
ambition would have been more likely to spring up than that of Byron.
But unluckily, as we have seen, this was not the case; and not only
was so fair a stimulus to good conduct wanting, but a rivalry of a
very different nature substituted in its place. The strange anecdotes
told of the last lord by the country people, among whom his fierce
and solitary habits had procured for him a sort of fearful renown,
were of a nature livelily to arrest the fancy of the young poet, and
even to waken in his mind a sort of boyish admiration for
singularities which he found thus elevated into matters of wonder and
record. By some it has been even supposed that in these stories of his
eccentric relative his imagination found the first dark outlines of
that ideal character, which he afterwards embodied in so many
different shapes, and ennobled by his genius. But however this may be,
it is at least far from improbable that, destitute as he was of other
and better models, the peculiarities of his immediate predecessor
should, in a considerable degree, have influenced his fancy and
tastes. One habit, which he seems early to have derived from this
spirit of imitation, and which he retained through life, was that of
constantly having arms of some description about or near him--it being
his practice, when quite a boy, to carry, at all times, small loaded
pistols in his waistcoat pockets. The affray, indeed, of the late lord
with Mr. Chaworth had, at a very early age, by connecting duelling in
his mind with the name of his race, led him to turn his attention to
this mode of arbitrament; and the mortification which he had, for some
time, to endure at school, from insults, as he imagined, hazarded on
the presumption of his physical inferiority, found consolation in the
thought that a day would yet arrive when the law of the pistol would
place him on a level with the strongest.

On their arrival from Scotland, Mrs. Byron, with the hope of having
his lameness removed, placed her son under the care of a person, who
professed the cure of such cases, at Nottingham. The name of this man,
who appears to have been a mere empirical pretender, was Lavender; and
the manner in which he is said to have proceeded was by first rubbing
the foot over, for a considerable time, with handsful of oil, and then
twisting the limb forcibly round, and screwing it up in a wooden
machine. That the boy might not lose ground in his education during
this interval, he received lessons in Latin from a respectable
schoolmaster, Mr. Rogers, who read parts of Virgil and Cicero with
him, and represents his proficiency to have been, for his age,
considerable. He was often, during his lessons, in violent pain, from
the torturing position in which his foot was kept; and Mr. Rogers one
day said to him, "It makes me uncomfortable, my Lord, to see you
sitting there in such pain as I _know_ you must be suffering."--"Never
mind, Mr. Rogers," answered the boy; "you shall not see any signs of
it in _me_."

This gentleman, who speaks with the most affectionate remembrance of
his pupil, mentions several instances of the gaiety of spirit with
which he used to take revenge on his tormentor, Lavender, by exposing
and laughing at his pompous ignorance. Among other tricks, he one day
scribbled down on a sheet of paper all the letters of the alphabet,
put together at random, but in the form of words and sentences, and,
placing them before this all-pretending person, asked him gravely
what language it was. The quack, unwilling to own his ignorance,
answered confidently, "Italian,"--to the infinite delight, as it may
be supposed, of the little satirist in embryo, who burst into a loud,
triumphant laugh at the success of the trap which he had thus laid for
imposture.

With that mindfulness towards all who had been about him in his youth,
which was so distinguishing a trait in his character, he, many years
after, when in the neighbourhood of Nottingham, sent a message, full
of kindness, to his old instructor, and bid the bearer of it tell him,
that, beginning from a certain line in Virgil which he mentioned, he
could recite twenty verses on, which he well remembered having read
with this gentleman, when suffering all the time the most dreadful
pain.

It was about this period, according to his nurse, May Gray, that the
first symptom of any tendency towards rhyming showed itself in him;
and the occasion which she represented as having given rise to this
childish effort was as follows:--An elderly lady, who was in the habit
of visiting his mother, had made use of some expression that very much
affronted him; and these slights, his nurse said, he generally
resented violently and implacably. The old lady had some curious
notions respecting the soul, which, she imagined, took its flight to
the moon after death, as a preliminary essay before it proceeded
further. One day, after a repetition, it is supposed, of her original
insult to the boy, he appeared before his nurse in a violent rage.
"Well, my little hero," she asked, "what's the matter with you now?"
Upon which the child answered, that "this old woman had put him in a
most terrible passion--that he could not bear the sight of her," &c.
&c.--and then broke out into the following doggerel, which he repeated
over and over, as if delighted with the vent he had found for his
rage:--

In Nottingham county there lives at Swan Green,
As curst an old lady as ever was seen;
And when she does die, which I hope will be soon,
She firmly believes she will go to the moon.

It is possible that these rhymes may have been caught up at
second-hand; and he himself, as will presently be seen, dated his
"first dash into poetry," as he calls it, a year later:--but the
anecdote altogether, as containing some early dawnings of character,
appeared to me worth preserving.

The small income of Mrs. Byron received at this time the
addition--most seasonable, no doubt, though on what grounds accorded,
I know not--of a pension on the Civil List, of 300_l._ a year. The
following is a copy of the King's warrant for the grant:--(Signed)

"GEORGE R.

"WHEREAS we are graciously pleased to grant unto Catharine
Gordon Byron, widow, an annuity of 300_l._, to commence from
5th July, 1799, and to continue during pleasure: our will
and pleasure is, that, by virtue of our general letters of
Privy Seal, bearing date 5th November, 1760, you do issue
and pay out of our treasure, or revenue in the receipt of
the Exchequer, applicable to the uses of our civil
government, unto the said Catharine Gordon Byron, widow, or
her assignees, the said annuity, to commence from 5th July,
1799, and to be paid quarterly, or otherwise, as the same
shall become due, and to continue during our pleasure; and
for so doing this shall be your warrant. Given at our Court
of St. James's, 2d October, 1799, 39th year of our reign.

"By His Majesty's command,

(Signed) "W. PITT.

"S. DOUGLAS.

"EDW^D. ROBERTS, Dep. Cler^us. Pellium."

Finding but little benefit from the Nottingham practitioner, Mrs.
Byron, in the summer of the year 1799, thought it right to remove her
boy to London, where, at the suggestion of Lord Carlisle, he was put
under the care of Dr. Baillie. It being an object, too, to place him
at some quiet school, where the means adopted for the cure of his
infirmity might be more easily attended to, the establishment of the
late Dr. Glennie, at Dulwich, was chosen for that purpose; and as it
was thought advisable that he should have a separate apartment to
sleep in, Dr. Glennie had a bed put up for him in his own study. Mrs.
Byron, who had remained a short time behind him at Newstead, on her
arrival in town took a house upon Sloane Terrace; and, under the
direction of Dr. Baillie, one of the Messrs. Sheldrake[22] was
employed to construct an instrument for the purpose of straightening
the limb of the child. Moderation in all athletic exercises was, of
course, prescribed; but Dr. Glennie found it by no means easy to
enforce compliance with this rule, as, though sufficiently quiet when
along with him in his study, no sooner was the boy released for play,
than he showed as much ambition to excel in all exercises as the most
robust youth of the school;--"an ambition," adds Dr. Glennie, in the
communication with which he favoured me a short time before his death,
"which I have remarked to prevail in general in young persons
labouring under similar defects of nature."[23]

Having been instructed in the elements of Latin grammar according to
the mode of teaching adopted at Aberdeen, the young student had now
unluckily to retrace his steps, and was, as is too often the case,
retarded in his studies and perplexed in his recollections, by the
necessity of toiling through the rudiments again in one of the forms
prescribed by the English schools. "I found him enter upon his tasks,"
says Dr. Glennie, "with alacrity and success. He was playful,
good-humoured, and beloved by his companions. His reading in history
and poetry was far beyond the usual standard of his age, and in my
study he found many books open to him, both to please his taste and
gratify his curiosity; among others, a set of our poets from Chaucer
to Churchill, which I am almost tempted to say he had more than once
perused from beginning to end. He showed at this age an intimate
acquaintance with the historical parts of the Holy Scriptures, upon
which he seemed delighted to converse with me, especially after our
religious exercises of a Sunday evening; when he would reason upon the
facts contained in the Sacred Volume with every appearance of belief
in the divine truths which they unfold. That the impressions," adds
the writer, "thus imbibed in his boyhood, had, notwithstanding the
irregularities of his after life, sunk deep into his mind, will
appear, I think, to every impartial reader of his works in general;
and I never have been able to divest myself of the persuasion that, in
the strange aberrations which so unfortunately marked his subsequent
career, he must have found it difficult to violate the better
principles early instilled into him."

It should have been mentioned, among the traits which I have recorded
of his still earlier years, that, according to the character given of
him by his first nurse's husband, he was, when a mere child,
"particularly inquisitive and puzzling about religion."

It was not long before Dr. Glennie began to discover--what instructors
of youth must too often experience--that the parent was a much more
difficult subject to deal with than the child. Though professing
entire acquiescence in the representations of this gentleman, as to
the propriety of leaving her son to pursue his studies without
interruption, Mrs. Byron had neither sense nor self-denial enough to
act up to these professions; but, in spite of the remonstrances of Dr.
Glennie, and the injunctions of Lord Carlisle, continued to interfere
with and thwart the progress of the boy's education in every way that
a fond, wrong-headed, and self-willed mother could devise. In vain was
it stated to her that, in all the elemental parts of learning which
are requisite for a youth destined to a great public school, young
Byron was much behind other youths of his age, and that, to retrieve
this deficiency, the undivided application of his whole time would be
necessary. Though appearing to be sensible of the truth of these
suggestions, she not the less embarrassed and obstructed the teacher
in his task. Not content with the interval between Saturday and
Monday, which, contrary to Dr. Glennie's wish, the boy generally
passed at Sloane Terrace, she would frequently keep him at home a week
beyond this time, and, still further to add to the distraction of such
interruptions, collected around him a numerous circle of young
acquaintances, without exercising, as may be supposed, much
discrimination in her choice. "How, indeed, could she?" asks Dr.
Glennie--"Mrs. Byron was a total stranger to English society and
English manners; with an exterior far from prepossessing, an
understanding where nature had not been more bountiful, a mind almost
wholly without cultivation, and the peculiarities of northern
opinions, northern habits, and northern accent, I trust I do no great
prejudice to the memory of my countrywoman, if I say Mrs. Byron was
not a Madame de Lambert, endowed with powers to retrieve the fortune,
and form the character and manners, of a young nobleman, her son."

The interposition of Lord Carlisle, to whose authority it was found
necessary to appeal, had more than once given a check to these
disturbing indulgences. Sanctioned by such support, Dr. Glennie even
ventured to oppose himself to the privilege, so often abused, of the
usual visits on a Saturday; and the scenes which he had to encounter
on each new case of refusal were such as would have wearied out the
patience of any less zealous and conscientious schoolmaster. Mrs.
Byron, whose paroxysms of passion were not, like those of her son,
"silent rages," would, on all these occasions, break out into such
audible fits of temper as it was impossible to keep from reaching the
ears of the scholars and the servants; and Dr. Glennie had, one day,
the pain of overhearing a school-fellow of his noble pupil say to him,
"Byron, your mother is a fool;" to which the other answered gloomily,
"I know it." In consequence of all this violence and impracticability
of temper, Lord Carlisle at length ceased to have any intercourse with
the mother of his ward; and on a further application from the
instructor, for the exertion of his influence, said, "I can have
nothing more to do with Mrs. Byron,--you must now manage her as you
can."

Among the books that lay accessible to the boys in Dr. Glennie's study
was a pamphlet written by the brother of one of his most intimate
friends, entitled, "Narrative of the Shipwreck of the Juno on the
coast of Arracan, in the year 1795." The writer had been the second
officer of the ship, and the account which he had sent home to his
friends of the sufferings of himself and his fellow-passengers had
appeared to them so touching and strange, that they determined to
publish it. The pamphlet attracted but little, it seems, of public
attention, but among the young students of Dulwich Grove it was a
favourite study; and the impression which it left on the retentive
mind of Byron may have had some share, perhaps, in suggesting that
curious research through all the various Accounts of Shipwrecks upon
record, by which he prepared himself to depict with such power a scene
of the same description in Don Juan. The following affecting incident,
mentioned by the author of this pamphlet, has been adopted, it will be
seen, with but little change either of phrase or circumstance, by the
poet:--

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