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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It is true that Lord Byron's high notions of rank were, in his boyish
days, so little disguised or softened down, as to draw upon him, at
times, the ridicule of his companions; and it was at Dulwich, I think,
that from his frequent boast of the superiority of an old English
barony over all the later creations of the peerage, he got the
nickname, among the boys, of "the Old English Baron." But it is a
mistake to suppose that, either at school or afterwards, he was at all
guided in the selection of his friends by aristocratic sympathies. On
the contrary, like most very proud persons, he chose his intimates in
general from a rank beneath his own, and those boys whom he ranked as
_friends_ at school were mostly of this description; while the chief
charm that recommended to him his younger favourites was their
inferiority to himself in age and strength, which enabled him to
indulge his generous pride by taking upon himself, when necessary, the
office of their protector.

Among those whom he attached to himself by this latter tie, one of the
earliest (though he has omitted to mention his name) was William
Harness, who at the time of his entering Harrow was ten years of age,
while Byron was fourteen. Young Harness, still lame from an accident
of his childhood, and but just recovered from a severe illness, was
ill fitted to struggle with the difficulties of a public school; and
Byron, one day, seeing him bullied by a boy much older and stronger
than himself, interfered and took his part. The next day, as the
little fellow was standing alone, Byron came to him and said,
"Harness, if any one bullies you, tell me, and I'll thrash him, if I
can." The young champion kept his word, and they were from this time,
notwithstanding the difference of their ages, inseparable friends. A
coolness, however, subsequently arose between them, to which, and to
the juvenile friendship it interrupted, Lord Byron, in a letter
addressed to Harness six years afterwards, alludes with so much kindly
feeling, so much delicacy and frankness, that I am tempted to
anticipate the date of the letter, and give an extract from it here.

"We both seem perfectly to recollect, with a mixture of pleasure and
regret, the hours we once passed together, and I assure you, most
sincerely, they are numbered among the happiest of my brief chronicle
of enjoyment. I am now _getting into years_, that is to say, I was
_twenty_ a month ago, and another year will send me into the world to
run my career of folly with the rest. I was then just fourteen,--you
were almost the _first_ of my Harrow friends, certainly the first in
my esteem, if not in date; but an absence from Harrow for some time,
shortly after, and new connections on your side, and the difference in
our conduct (an advantage decidedly in your favour) from that
turbulent and riotous disposition of mine, which impelled me into
every species of mischief,--all these circumstances combined to
destroy an intimacy, which affection urged me to continue, and memory
compels me to regret. But there is not a circumstance attending that
period, hardly a sentence we exchanged, which is not impressed on my
mind at this moment. I need not say more,--this assurance alone must
convince you, had I considered them as trivial, they would have been
less indelible. How well I recollect the perusal of your 'first
flights!' There is another circumstance you do not know;--the _first
lines_ I ever attempted at Harrow were addressed to _you_. You were to
have seen them; but Sinclair had the copy in his possession when we
went home;--and, on our return, we were _strangers_. They were
destroyed, and certainly no great loss; but you will perceive from
this circumstance my opinions at an age when we cannot be hypocrites.

"I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and I shall now
conclude with what I ought to have begun. We were once friends,--nay,
we have always been so, for our separation was the effect of chance,
not of dissension. I do not know how far our destinations in life may
throw us together, but if opportunity and inclination allow you to
waste a thought on such a hare-brained being as myself, you will find
me at least sincere, and not so bigoted to my faults as to involve
others in the consequences. Will you sometimes write to me? I do not
ask it often; and, if we meet, let us be what we _should_ be, and what
we _were_."

Of the tenaciousness with which, as we see in this letter, he clung to
all the impressions of his youth, there can be no stronger proof than
the very interesting fact, that, while so little of his own boyish
correspondence has been preserved, there were found among his papers
almost all the notes and letters which his principal school
favourites, even the youngest, had ever addressed to him; and, in some
cases, where the youthful writers had omitted to date their scrawls,
his faithful memory had, at an interval of years after, supplied the
deficiency. Among these memorials, so fondly treasured by him, there
is one which it would be unjust not to cite, as well on account of the
manly spirit that dawns through its own childish language, as for the
sake of the tender and amiable feeling which, it will be seen, the
re-perusal of it, in other days, awakened in Byron:--

"TO THE LORD BYRON, &c. &c.

"Harrow on the Hill, July 28. 1805.

"Since you have been so unusually unkind to me, in calling me names
whenever you meet me, of late, I must beg an explanation, wishing to
know whether you choose to be as good friends with me as ever. I must
own that, for this last month, you have entirely cut me,--for, I
suppose, your new cronies. But think not that I will (because you
choose to take into your head some whim or other) be always going up
to you, nor do, as I observe certain other fellows doing, to regain
your friendship; nor think that I am your friend either through
interest, or because you are bigger and older than I am. No,--it
never was so, nor ever shall be so. I was only your friend, and am so
still,--unless you go on in this way, calling me names whenever you
see me. I am sure you may easily perceive I do not like it;
therefore, why should you do it, unless you wish that I should no
longer be your friend? And why should I be so, if you treat me
unkindly? I have no interest in being so. Though you do not let the
boys bully me, yet if _you_ treat me unkindly, that is to me a great
deal worse.

"I am no hypocrite, Byron, nor will I, for your pleasure, ever suffer
you to call me names, if you wish me to be your friend. If not, I
cannot help it. I am sure no one can say that I will cringe to regain
a friendship that you have rejected. Why should I do so? Am I not your
equal? Therefore, what interest can I have in doing so? When we meet
again in the world, (that is, if you choose it,) _you_ cannot advance
or promote _me_, nor I you. Therefore I beg and entreat of you, if you
value my friendship,--which, by your conduct, I am sure I cannot think
you do,--not to call me the names you do, nor abuse me. Till that
time, it will be out of my power to call you friend. I shall be
obliged for an answer as soon as it is convenient; till then

I remain yours,

----

"I cannot say your friend."

Endorsed on this letter, in the handwriting of Lord Byron, is the
following:--

"This and another letter were written at Harrow, by my _then_, and I hope
_ever_, beloved friend, Lord ----, when we were both school-boys, and sent
to my study in consequence of some childish misunderstanding,--the only
one which ever arose between us. It was of short duration, and I retain
this note solely for the purpose of submitting it to his perusal, that we
may smile over the recollection of the insignificance of our first and
last quarrel.

"BYRON."

In a letter, dated two years afterwards, from the same boy,[33] there
occurs the following characteristic trait:--"I think, by your last
letter, that you are very much piqued with most of your friends; and,
if I am not much mistaken, you are a little piqued with me. In one
part you say, 'There is little or no doubt a few years, or months,
will render us as politely indifferent to each other as if we had
never passed a portion of our time together.' Indeed, Byron, you wrong
me, and I have no doubt--at least, I hope--you wrong yourself."

As that propensity to self-delineation, which so strongly pervades his
maturer works is, to the full, as predominant in his early
productions, there needs no better record of his mode of life, as a
school-boy, than what these fondly circumstantial effusions supply.
Thus the sports he delighted and excelled in are enumerated:--

"Yet when confinement's lingering hour was done,
Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one:
Together we impell'd the flying ball,

* * * * *

Together join'd in cricket's manly toil,
Or shared the produce of the river's spoil;
Or, plunging from the green, declining shore,
Our pliant limbs the buoyant waters bore;
In every element, unchanged, the same,
All, all that brothers should be, but the name."

The danger which he incurred in a fight with some of the neighbouring
farmers--an event well remembered by some of his school-fellows--is
thus commemorated.--

"Still I remember, in the factious strife,
The rustic's musket aim'd against my life;
High poised in air the massy weapon hung,
A cry of horror burst from every tongue:
Whilst I, in combat with another foe,
Fought on, unconscious of the impending blow.
Your arm, brave boy, arrested his career--
Forward you sprung, insensible to fear;
Disarm'd and baffled by your conquering hand,
The grovelling savage roll'd upon the sand."

Some feud, it appears, had arisen on the subject of the
cricket-ground, between these "clods" (as in school-language they are
called) and the boys, and one or two skirmishes had previously taken
place. But the engagement here recorded was accidentally brought on by
the breaking up of school and the dismissal of the volunteers from
drill, both happening, on that occasion, at the same hour. This
circumstance accounts for the use of the musket, the butt-end of which
was aimed at Byron's head, and would have felled him to the ground,
but for the interposition of his friend Tatersall, a lively,
high-spirited boy, whom he addresses here under the name of Davus.

Notwithstanding these general habits of play and idleness, which might
seem to indicate a certain absence of reflection and feeling, there
were moments when the youthful poet would retire thoughtfully within
himself, and give way to moods of musing uncongenial with the usual
cheerfulness of his age. They show a tomb in the churchyard at Harrow,
commanding a view over Windsor, which was so well known to be his
favourite resting-place, that the boys called it "Byron's tomb;"[34]
and here, they say, he used to sit for hours, wrapt up in
thought,--brooding lonelily over the first stirrings of passion and
genius in his soul, and occasionally, perhaps, indulging in those
bright forethoughts of fame, under the influence of which, when little
more than fifteen years of age, he wrote these remarkable lines:--

"My epitaph shall be my name alone;
If that with honour fail to crown my clay,
Oh may no other fame my deeds repay;
That, only that, shall single out the spot,
By that remember'd, or with that forgot."

In the autumn of 1802, he passed a short time with his mother at Bath,
and entered, rather prematurely, into some of the gaieties of the
place. At a masquerade given by Lady Riddel, he appeared in the
character of a Turkish boy,--a sort of anticipation, both in beauty
and costume, of his own young Selim, in "The Bride." On his entering
into the house, some person in the crowd attempted to snatch the
diamond crescent from his turban, but was prevented by the prompt
interposition of one of the party. The lady who mentioned to me this
circumstance, and who was well acquainted with Mrs. Byron at that
period, adds the following remark in the communication with which she
has favoured me:--"At Bath I saw a good deal of Lord Byron,--his
mother frequently sent for me to take tea with her. He was always very
pleasant and droll, and, when conversing about absent friends, showed
a slight turn for satire, which after-years, as is well known, gave a
finer edge to."

We come now to an event in his life which, according to his own
deliberate persuasion, exercised a lasting and paramount influence
over the whole of his subsequent character and career.

It was in the year 1803 that his heart, already twice, as we have
seen, possessed with the childish notion that it loved, conceived an
attachment which--young as he was, even then, for such a
feeling--sunk so deep into his mind as to give a colour to all his
future life. That unsuccessful loves are generally the most lasting,
is a truth, however sad, which unluckily did not require this instance
to confirm it. To the same cause, I fear, must be traced the perfect
innocence and romance which distinguish this very early attachment to
Miss Chaworth from the many others that succeeded, without effacing it
in his heart;--making it the only one whose details can be entered
into with safety, or whose results, however darkening their influence
on himself, can be dwelt upon with pleasurable interest by others.

On leaving Bath, Mrs. Byron took up her abode, in lodgings, at
Nottingham,--Newstead Abbey being at that time let to Lord Grey de
Ruthen,--and during the Harrow vacations of this year, she was joined
there by her son. So attached was he to Newstead, that even to be in
its neighbourhood was a delight to him; and before he became
acquainted with Lord Grey, he used sometimes to sleep, for a night, at
the small house near the gate which is still known by the name of "The
Hut."[35] An intimacy, however, soon sprang up between him and his
noble tenant, and an apartment in the abbey was from thenceforth
always at his service. To the family of Miss Chaworth, who resided at
Annesley, in the immediate neighbourhood of Newstead, he had been made
known, some time before, in London, and now renewed his acquaintance
with them. The young heiress herself combined with the many worldly
advantages that encircled her, much personal beauty, and a disposition
the most amiable and attaching. Though already fully alive to her
charms, it was at the period of which we are speaking that the young
poet, who was then in his sixteenth year, while the object of his
admiration was about two years older, seems to have drunk deepest of
that fascination whose effects were to be so lasting;--six short
summer weeks which he now passed in her company being sufficient to
lay the foundation of a feeling for all life.

He used, at first, though offered a bed at Annesley, to return every
night to Newstead, to sleep; alleging as a reason that he was afraid
of the family pictures of the Chaworths,--that he fancied "they had
taken a grudge to him on account of the duel, and would come down from
their frames at night to haunt him."[36] At length, one evening, he
said gravely to Miss Chaworth and her cousin, "In going home last
night I saw a _bogle_;"--which Scotch term being wholly unintelligible
to the young ladies, he explained that he had seen a _ghost_, and
would not therefore return to Newstead that evening. From this time he
always slept at Annesley during the remainder of his visit, which was
interrupted only by a short excursion to Matlock and Castleton, in
which he had the happiness of accompanying Miss Chaworth and her
party, and of which the following interesting notice appears in one of
his memorandum-books:--

"When I was fifteen years of age, it happened that, in a cavern in
Derbyshire, I had to cross in a boat (in which two people only could
lie down) a stream which flows under a rock, with the rock so close
upon the water as to admit the boat only to be pushed on by a ferryman
(a sort of Charon) who wades at the stern, stooping all the time. The
companion of my transit was M.A.C., with whom I had been long in love,
and never told it, though _she_ had discovered it without. I recollect
my sensations, but cannot describe them, and it is as well. We were a
party, a Mr. W., two Miss W.s, Mr. and Mrs. Cl--ke, Miss R. and _my_
M.A.C. Alas! why do I say MY? Our union would have healed feuds in
which blood had been shed by our fathers,--it would have joined lands
broad and rich, it would have joined at least _one_ heart, and two
persons not ill matched in years (she is two years my elder),
and--and--and--_what_ has been the result?"

In the dances of the evening at Matlock, Miss Chaworth, of course,
joined, while her lover sat looking on, solitary and mortified. It is
not impossible, indeed, that the dislike which he always expressed for
this amusement may have originated in some bitter pang, felt in his
youth, on seeing "the lady of his love" led out by others to the gay
dance from which he was himself excluded. On the present occasion, the
young heiress of Annesley having had for her partner (as often happens
at Matlock) some person with whom she was wholly unacquainted, on her
resuming her seat, Byron said to her pettishly, "I hope you like your
friend?" The words were scarce out of his lips when he was accosted by
an ungainly-looking Scotch lady, who rather boisterously claimed him
as "cousin," and was putting his pride to the torture with her
vulgarity, when he heard the voice of his fair companion retorting
archly in his ear, "I hope _you_ like your friend?"

His time at Annesley was mostly passed in riding with Miss Chaworth
and her cousin, sitting in idle reverie, as was his custom, pulling at
his handkerchief, or in firing at a door which opens upon the terrace,
and which still, I believe, bears the marks of his shots. But his
chief delight was in sitting to hear Miss Chaworth play; and the
pretty Welsh air, "Mary Anne," was (partly, of course, on account of
the name) his especial favourite. During all this time he had the pain
of knowing that the heart of her he loved was occupied by
another;--that, as he himself expresses it,

"Her sighs were not for him; to her he was
Even as a brother--but no more."

Neither is it, indeed, probable, had even her affections been
disengaged, that Lord Byron would, at this time, have been selected as
the object of them. A seniority of two years gives to a girl, "on the
eve of womanhood," an advance into life with which the boy keeps no
proportionate pace. Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere
school-boy. He was in his manners, too, at that period, rough and odd,
and (as I have heard from more than one quarter) by no means popular
among girls of his own age. If, at any moment, however, he had
flattered himself with the hope of being loved by her, a circumstance
mentioned in his "Memoranda," as one of the most painful of those
humiliations to which the defect in his foot had exposed him, must
have let the truth in, with dreadful certainty, upon his heart. He
either was told of, or overheard, Miss Chaworth saying to her maid,
"Do you think I could care any thing for that lame boy?" This speech,
as he himself described it, was like a shot through his heart. Though
late at night when he heard it, he instantly darted out of the house,
and scarcely knowing whither he ran, never stopped till he found
himself at Newstead.

The picture which he has drawn of his youthful love, in one of the
most interesting of his poems, "The Dream," shows how genius and
feeling can elevate the realities of this life, and give to the
commonest events and objects an undying lustre. The old hall at
Annesley, under the name of "the antique oratory," will long call up
to fancy the "maiden and the youth" who once stood in it: while the
image of the "lover's steed," though suggested by the unromantic
race-ground of Nottingham, will not the less conduce to the general
charm of the scene, and share a portion of that light which only
genius could shed over it.

He appears already, at this boyish age, to have been so far a
proficient in gallantry as to know the use that may be made of the
trophies of former triumphs in achieving new ones; for he used to
boast, with much pride, to Miss Chaworth, of a locket which some fair
favourite had given him, and which probably may have been a present
from that pretty cousin, of whom he speaks with such warmth in one of
the notices already quoted. He was also, it appears, not a little
aware of his own beauty, which, notwithstanding the tendency to
corpulence derived from his mother, gave promise, at this time, of
that peculiar expression into which his features refined and kindled
afterwards.

With the summer holidays ended this dream of his youth. He saw Miss
Chaworth once more in the succeeding year, and took his last farewell
of her (as he himself used to relate) on that hill near Annesley[37]
which, in his poem of "The Dream," he describes so happily as
"crowned with a peculiar diadem." No one, he declared, could have told
how _much_ he felt--for his countenance was calm, and his feelings
restrained. "The next time I see you," said he in parting with her, "I
suppose you will be Mrs. Chaworth[38],"--and her answer was, "I hope
so." It was before this interview that he wrote, with a pencil, in a
volume of Madame de Maintenon's letters, belonging to her, the
following verses, which have never, I believe, before been
published:--[39]

"Oh Memory, torture me no more,
The present's all o'ercast;
My hopes of future bliss are o'er,
In mercy veil the past.
Why bring those images to view
I henceforth must resign?
Ah! why those happy hours renew,
That never can be mine?
Past pleasure doubles present pain,
To sorrow adds regret,
Regret and hope are both in vain,
I ask but to--forget."

In the following year, 1805, Miss Chaworth was married to his
successful rival, Mr. John Musters; and a person who was present when
the first intelligence of the event was communicated to him, thus
describes the manner in which he received it.--"I was present when he
first heard of the marriage. His mother said, 'Byron, I have some news
for you.'--'Well, what is it?'--'Take out your handkerchief first,
for you will want it.'--'Nonsense!'--Take out your handkerchief, I
say.' He did so, to humour her. 'Miss Chaworth is married.' An
expression very peculiar, impossible to describe, passed over his pale
face, and he hurried his handkerchief into his pocket, saying, with an
affected air of coldness and nonchalance, 'Is that all?'--'Why, I
expected you would have been plunged in grief!'--He made no reply,
and soon began to talk about something else."

His pursuits at Harrow continued to be of the same truant description
during the whole of his stay there;--"always," as he says himself,
"cricketing, rebelling,[40] _rowing_, and in all manner of mischiefs."
The "rebelling," of which he here speaks, (though it never, I believe,
proceeded to any act of violence,) took place on the retirement of Dr.
Drury from his situation as head master, when three candidates for
the vacant chair presented themselves,--Mark Drury, Evans, and
Butler. On the first movement to which this contest gave rise in the
school, young Wildman was at the head of the party for Mark Drury,
while Byron at first held himself aloof from any. Anxious, however, to
have him as an ally, one of the Drury faction said to Wildman--"Byron,
I know, will not join, because he doesn't choose to act second to any
one, but, by giving up the leadership to him, you may at once secure
him." This Wildman accordingly did, and Byron took the command of the
party.

The violence with which he opposed the election of Dr. Butler on this
occasion (chiefly from the warm affection which he had felt towards
the last master) continued to embitter his relations with that
gentleman during the remainder of his stay at Harrow. Unhappily their
opportunities of collision were the more frequent from Byron's being a
resident in Dr. Butler's house. One day the young rebel, in a fit of
defiance, tore down all the gratings from the window in the hall; and
when called upon by his host to say why he had committed this
violence, answered, with stern coolness, "Because they darkened the
hall." On another occasion he explicitly, and so far manfully, avowed
to this gentleman's face the pique he entertained against him. It has
long been customary, at the end of a term, for the master to invite
the upper boys to dine with him; and these invitations are generally
considered as, like royal ones, a sort of command. Lord Byron,
however, when asked, sent back a refusal, which rather surprising Dr.
Butler, he, on the first opportunity that occurred, enquired of him,
in the presence of the other boys, his motive for this step:--"Have
you any other engagement?"--"No, sir."--"But you must have _some_
reason, Lord Byron."--"I have."--"What is it?"--"Why, Dr. Butler,"
replied the young peer, with proud composure, "if you should happen to
come into my neighbourhood when I was staying at Newstead, I certainly
should not ask you to dine with me, and therefore feel that I ought
not to dine with _you_."[41]

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