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

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

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The general character which he bore among the masters at Harrow was that
of an idle boy, who would never learn anything; and, as far as regarded
his tasks in school, this reputation was, by his own avowal, not
ill-founded. It is impossible, indeed, to look through the books which
he had then in use, and which are scribbled over with clumsy interlined
translations, without being struck with the narrow extent of his
classical attainments. The most ordinary Greek words have their English
signification scrawled under them, showing too plainly that he was not
sufficiently familiarised with their meaning to trust himself without
this aid. Thus, in his Xenophon we find {~GREEK SMALL LETTER NU~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER EPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
IOTA~}, _young_--{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER MU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
NU~}, _bodies_--{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
NU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER OMEGA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}
{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL
LETTER IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER
ALPHA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER GAMMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA~}{~GREEK
SMALL LETTER THETA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
IOTA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~}, _good men_, &c. &c.--and even
in the volumes of Greek plays which he presented to the library on his
departure, we observe, among other instances, the common word {~GREEK
SMALL LETTER CHI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER RHO~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
UPSILON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER
OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER FINAL SIGMA~} provided with its English
representative in the margin.

But, notwithstanding his backwardness in the mere verbal scholarship,
on which so large and precious a portion of life is wasted,[42] in all
that general and miscellaneous knowledge which is alone useful in the
world, he was making rapid and even wonderful progress. With a mind
too inquisitive and excursive to be imprisoned within statutable
limits, he flew to subjects that interested his already manly tastes,
with a zest which it is in vain to expect that the mere pedantries of
school could inspire; and the irregular, but ardent, snatches of study
which he caught in this way, gave to a mind like his an impulse
forwards, which left more disciplined and plodding competitors far
behind. The list, indeed, which he has left on record of the works, in
all departments of literature, which he thus hastily and greedily
devoured before he was fifteen years of age, is such as almost to
startle belief,--comprising, as it does, a range and variety of
study, which might make much older "helluones librorum" hide their
heads.

Not to argue, however, from the powers and movements of a mind like
Byron's, which might well be allowed to take a privileged direction of
its own, there is little doubt, that to _any_ youth of talent and
ambition, the plan of instruction pursued in the great schools and
universities of England, wholly inadequate as it is to the
intellectual wants of the age,[43] presents an alternative of evils
not a little embarrassing. Difficult, nay, utterly impossible, as he
will find it, to combine a competent acquisition of useful knowledge
with that round of antiquated studies which a pursuit of scholastic
honours requires, he must either, by devoting the whole of his
attention and ambition to the latter object, remain ignorant on most
of those subjects upon which mind grapples with mind in life, or by
adopting, as Lord Byron and other distinguished persons have done, the
contrary system, consent to pass for a dunce or idler in the schools,
in order to afford himself even a chance of attaining eminence in the
world.

From the memorandums scribbled by the young poet in his school-books,
we might almost fancy that, even at so early an age, he had a sort of
vague presentiment that everything relating to him would one day be an
object of curiosity and interest. The date of his entrance at
Harrow,[44] the names of the boys who were, at that time, monitors,
the list of his fellow pupils under Doctor Drury,[45]--all are noted
down with a fond minuteness, as if to form points of retrospect in his
after-life; and that he sometimes referred to them with this feeling
will appear from one touching instance. On the first leaf of his
"Scriptores Graeci," we find, in his schoolboy hand, the following
memorial:--"George Gordon Byron, Wednesday, June 26th, A. D. 1805, 3
quarters of an hour past 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 3d
school,--Calvert, monitor; Tom Wildman on my left hand and Long on my
right. Harrow on the Hill." On the same leaf, written five years
after, appears this comment:--

"Eheu fugaces, Posthume! Posthume!
Labuntur anni."

"B. January 9th, 1809.--Of the four persons whose names are here
mentioned, one is dead, another in a distant climate, _all_ separated,
and not five years have elapsed since they sat together in school, and
none are yet twenty-one years of age."

The vacation of 1804[46] he passed with his mother at Southwell, to
which place she had removed from Nottingham, in the summer of this
year, having taken the house on the Green called Burgage Manor. There
is a Southwell play-bill extant, dated August 8th, 1804, in which the
play is announced as bespoke "by Mrs. and Lord Byron." The gentleman,
from whom the house where they resided was rented, possesses a library
of some extent, which the young poet, he says, ransacked with much
eagerness on his first coming to Southwell; and one of the books that
most particularly engaged and interested him was, as may be easily
believed, the life of Lord Herbert of Cherbury.

In the month of October, 1805, he was removed to Trinity College,
Cambridge, and his feelings on the change from his beloved Ida to this
new scene of life are thus described by himself:--

"When I first went up to college, it was a new and a heavy-hearted
scene for me: firstly, I so much disliked leaving Harrow, that though
it was time (I being seventeen), it broke my very rest for the last
quarter with counting the days that remained. I always _hated_ Harrow
till the last year and a half, but then I liked it. Secondly, I wished
to go to Oxford, and not to Cambridge. Thirdly, I was so completely
alone in this new world, that it half broke my spirits. My companions
were not unsocial, but the contrary--lively, hospitable, of rank and
fortune, and gay far beyond my gaiety. I mingled with, and dined, and
supped, &c., with them; but, I know not how, it was one of the
deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no
longer a boy."

But though, for a time, he may have felt this sort of estrangement at
Cambridge, to remain long without attaching himself was not in his
nature; and the friendship which he now formed with a youth named
Eddleston, who was two years younger than himself, even exceeded in
warmth and romance all his schoolboy attachments. This boy, whose
musical talents first drew them together, was, at the commencement of
their acquaintance, one of the choir at Cambridge, though he
afterwards, it appears, entered into a mercantile line of life; and
this disparity in their stations was by no means without its charm for
Byron, as gratifying at once both his pride and good-nature, and
founding the tie between them on the mutually dependent relations of
protection on the one side, and gratitude and devotion on the
other;--the only relations,[47] according to Lord Bacon, in which the
little friendship that still remains in the world is to be found. It
was upon a gift presented to him by Eddleston, that he wrote those
verses entitled "The Cornelian," which were printed in his first,
unpublished volume, and of which the following is a stanza:--

"Some, who can sneer at friendship's ties,
Have for my weakness oft reproved me;
Yet still the simple gift I prize,
For I am sure the giver loved me."

Another friendship, of a less unequal kind, which had been begun at
Harrow, and which he continued to cultivate during his first year at
Cambridge, is thus interestingly dwelt upon in one of his journals:--

"How strange are my thoughts!--The reading of the song of Milton,
Sabrina fair,' has brought back upon me--I know not how or why--the
happiest, perhaps, days of my life (always excepting, here and there,
a Harrow holiday in the two latter summers of my stay there) when
living at Cambridge with Edward Noel Long, afterwards of the
Guards,--who, after having served honourably in the expedition to
Copenhagen (of which two or three thousand scoundrels yet survive in
plight and pay), was drowned early in 1809, on his passage to Lisbon
with his regiment in the St. George transport, which was run foul of
in the night by another transport. We were rival swimmers--fond of
riding--reading--and of conviviality. We had been at Harrow together;
but--_there_, at least--his was a less boisterous spirit than mine. I
was always cricketing--rebelling--fighting--_row_ing (from _row_, not
_boat_-rowing, a different practice), and in all manner of mischiefs;
while he was more sedate and polished. At Cambridge--both of
Trinity--my spirit rather softened, or his roughened, for we became
very great friends. The description of Sabrina's seat reminds me of
our rival feats in _diving_. Though Cam's is not a very translucent
wave, it was fourteen feet deep, where we used to dive for, and pick
up--having thrown them in on purpose--plates, eggs, and even
shillings. I remember, in particular, there was the stump of a tree
(at least ten or twelve feet deep) in the bed of the river, in a spot
where we bathed most commonly, round which I used to cling, and
'wonder how the devil I came there.'

"Our evenings we passed in music (he was musical, and played on more
than one instrument, flute and violoncello), in which I was audience;
and I think that our chief beverage was soda-water. In the day we
rode, bathed, and lounged, reading occasionally. I remember our
buying, with vast alacrity, Moore's new quarto (in 1806), and reading
it together in the evenings.

"We only passed the summer together;--Long had gone into the Guards
during the year I passed in Notts, away from college. _His_
friendship, and a violent, though _pure_, love and passion--which held
me at the same period--were the then romance of the most romantic
period of my life.

* * * * *

"I remember that, in the spring of 1809, H---- laughed at my being
distressed at Long's death, and amused himself with making epigrams
upon his name, which was susceptible of a pun--_Long, short_, &c. But
three years after, he had ample leisure to repent it, when our mutual
friend and his, H----'s, particular friend, Charles Matthews, was
drowned also, and he himself was as much affected by a similar
calamity. But _I_ did not pay him back in puns and epigrams, for I
valued Matthews too much myself to do so; and, even if I had not, I
should have respected his griefs.

"Long's father wrote to me to write his son's epitaph. I promised--but
I had not the heart to complete it. He was such a good amiable being
as rarely remains long in this world; with talent and accomplishments,
too, to make him the more regretted. Yet, although a cheerful
companion, he had strange melancholy thoughts sometimes. I remember
once that we were going to his uncle's, I think--I went to accompany
him to the door merely, in some Upper or Lower Grosvenor or Brook
Street, I forget which, but it was in a street leading out of some
square,--he told me that, the night before, he 'had taken up a
pistol--not knowing or examining whether it was loaded or no--and had
snapped it at his head, leaving it to chance whether it might or might
not be charged.' The letter, too, which he wrote me, on leaving
college to join the Guards, was as melancholy in its tenour as it
could well be on such an occasion. But he showed nothing of this in
his deportment, being mild and gentle;--and yet with much turn for the
ludicrous in his disposition. We were both much attached to Harrow,
and sometimes made excursions there together from London to revive our
schoolboy recollections."

These affecting remembrances are contained in a Journal which he kept
during his residence at Ravenna, in 1821, and they are rendered still
more touching and remarkable by the circumstances under which they
were noted down. Domesticated in a foreign land, and even connected
with foreign conspirators, whose arms, at the moment he was writing,
were in his house, he could yet thus wholly disengage himself from the
scene around him, and, borne away by the current of memory into other
times, live over the lost friendships of his boyhood again. An English
gentleman (Mr. Wathen) who called upon him, at one of his residences
in Italy, having happened to mention in conversation that he had been
acquainted with Long, from that moment Lord Byron treated him with the
most marked kindness, and talked with him of Long, and of his amiable
qualities, till (as this gentleman says) the tears could not be
concealed in his eyes.

In the summer of this year (1806) he, as usual, joined his mother at
Southwell,--among the small, but select, society of which place he
had, during his visits, formed some intimacies and friendships, the
memory of which is still cherished there fondly and proudly. With the
exception, indeed, of the brief and bewildering interval which he
passed, as we have seen, in the company of Miss Chaworth, it was at
Southwell alone that an opportunity was ever afforded him of profiting
by the bland influence of female society, or of seeing what woman is
in the true sphere of her virtues, home. The amiable and intelligent
family of the Pigots received him within their circle as one of
themselves: and in the Rev. John Becher[48] the youthful poet found
not only an acute and judicious critic, but a sincere friend. There
were also one or two other families--as the Leacrofts, the
Housons--among whom his talents and vivacity made him always welcome;
and the proud shyness with which, through the whole of his minority,
he kept aloof from all intercourse with the neighbouring gentlemen
seems to have been entirely familiarised away by the small, cheerful
society of Southwell. One of the most intimate and valued of his
friends, at this period, has given me the following account of her
first acquaintance with him:--"The first time I was introduced to him
was at a party at his mother's, when he was so shy that she was forced
to send for him three times before she could persuade him to come into
the drawing-room, to play with the young people at a round game. He
was then a fat bashful boy, with his hair combed straight over his
forehead, and extremely like a miniature picture that his mother had
painted by M. de Chambruland. The next morning Mrs. Byron brought him
to call at our house, when he still continued shy and formal in his
manner. The conversation turned upon Cheltenham, where we had been
staying, the amusements there, the plays, &c.; and I mentioned that I
had seen the character of Gabriel Lackbrain very well performed. His
mother getting up to go, he accompanied her, making a formal bow, and
I, in allusion to the play, said, "Good by, Gaby." His countenance
lighted up, his handsome mouth displayed a broad grin, all his shyness
vanished, never to return, and, upon his mother's saying 'Come, Byron,
are you ready?'--no, she might go by herself, he would stay and talk a
little longer; and from that moment he used to come in and go out at
all hours, as it pleased him, and in our house considered himself
perfectly at home."

To this lady was addressed the earliest letter from his pen that has
fallen into my hands. He corresponded with many of his Harrow
friends,--with Lord Clare, Lord Powerscourt, Mr. William Peel, Mr.
William Bankes, and others. But it was then little foreseen what
general interest would one day attach to these school-boy letters; and
accordingly, as I have already had occasion to lament, there are but
few of them now in existence. The letter, of which I have spoken, to
his Southwell friend, though containing nothing remarkable, is perhaps
for that very reason worth insertion, as serving to show, on comparing
it with most of its successors, how rapidly his mind acquired
confidence in its powers. There is, indeed, one charm for the eye of
curiosity in his juvenile manuscripts, which they necessarily want in
their printed form; and that is the strong evidence of an irregular
education which they exhibit,--the unformed and childish handwriting,
and, now and then, even defective spelling of him who, in a very few
years after, was to start up one of the giants of English literature.

LETTER 1.

TO MISS ----.

Burgage Manor, August 29. 1804.

"I received the arms, my dear Miss ----, and am very much obliged to
you for the trouble you have taken. It is impossible I should have any
fault to find with them. The sight of the drawings gives me great
pleasure for a double reason,--in the first place, they will ornament
my books, in the next, they convince me that you have not entirely
_forgot_ me. I am, however, sorry you do not return sooner--you have
already been gone an _age_. I perhaps may have taken my departure for
London before you come back; but, however, I will hope not. Do not
overlook my watch-riband and purse, as I wish to carry them with me.
Your note was given me by Harry, at the play, whither I attended Miss
L---- and Dr. S. ----; and now I have set down to answer it before I go
to bed. If I am at Southwell when you return,--and I sincerely hope
you will soon, for I very much regret your absence,--I shall be happy
to hear you sing my favourite, 'The Maid of Lodi.' My mother, together
with myself, desires to be affectionately remembered to Mrs. Pigot,
and, believe me, my dear Miss ----,

I remain your affectionate friend,

"BYRON."

"P.S. If you think proper to send me any answer to this, I shall be
extremely happy to receive it. Adieu.

"P.S. 2d. As you say you are a novice in the art of knitting, I hope
it don't give you too much trouble. Go on _slowly_, but surely. Once
more, adieu."

We shall often have occasion to remark the fidelity to early habits
and tastes by which Lord Byron, though in other respects so versatile,
was distinguished. In the juvenile letter, just cited, there are two
characteristics of this kind which he preserved unaltered during the
remainder of his life;--namely, his punctuality in immediately
answering letters, and his love of the simplest ballad music. Among
the chief favourites to which this latter taste led him at this time
were the songs of the Duenna, which he had the good taste to delight
in; and some of his Harrow contemporaries still remember the
joyousness with which, when dining with his friends at the memorable
mother Barnard's, he used to roar out, "This bottle's the sun of our
table."

His visit to Southwell this summer was interrupted, about the
beginning of August, by one of those explosions of temper on the part
of Mrs. Byron, to which, from his earliest childhood, he had been but
too well accustomed, and in producing which his own rebel spirit was
not always, it may be supposed, entirely blameless. In all his
portraits of himself, so dark is the pencil which he employs, that the
following account of his own temper, from one of his journals, must be
taken with a due portion of that allowance for exaggeration, which his
style of self-portraiture, "overshadowing even the shade," requires.

"In all other respects," (he says, after mentioning his infant passion
for Mary Duff,) "I differed not at all from other children, being
neither tall nor short, dull nor witty, of my age, but rather
lively--except in my sullen moods, and then I was always a Devil.
They once (in one of my silent rages) wrenched a knife from me, which
I had snatched from table at Mrs. B.'s dinner (I always dined
earlier), and applied to my breast;--but this was three or four years
after, just before the late Lord B.'s decease.

"My _ostensible_ temper has certainly improved in later years; but I
shudder, and must, to my latest hour, regret the consequence of it and
my passions combined. One event--but no matter--there are others not
much better to think of also--and to them I give the preference....

"But I hate dwelling upon incidents. My temper is now under
management--rarely _loud_, and _when_ loud, never deadly. It is when
silent, and I feel my forehead and my cheek paling, that I cannot
control it; and then.... but unless there is a woman (and not any or
every woman) in the way, I have sunk into tolerable apathy."

Between a temper at all resembling this, and the loud hurricane bursts
of Mrs. Byron, the collision, it may be supposed, was not a little
formidable; and the age at which the young poet was now arrived;
when--as most parents feel--the impatience of youth begins to champ
the bit, would but render the occasions for such shocks more frequent.
It is told, as a curious proof of their opinion of each other's
violence, that, after parting one evening in a tempest of this kind,
they were known each to go privately that night to the apothecary's,
enquiring anxiously whether the other had been to purchase poison,
and cautioning the vender of drugs not to attend to such an
application, if made.

It was but rarely, however, that the young lord allowed himself to be
provoked into more than a passive share in these scenes. To the
boisterousness of his mother he would oppose a civil and, no doubt,
provoking silence,--bowing to her but the more profoundly the higher
her voice rose in the scale. In general, however, when he perceived
that a storm was at hand, in flight lay his only safe resource. To
this summary expedient he was driven at the period of which we are
speaking; but not till after a scene had taken place between him and
Mrs. Byron, in which the violence of her temper had proceeded to
lengths, that, however outrageous they may be deemed, were not, it
appears, unusual with her. The poet, Young, in describing a temper of
this sort, says--

"The cups and saucers, in a whirlwind sent,
Just intimate the lady's discontent."

But poker and tongs were, it seems, the missiles which Mrs. Byron
preferred, and which she, more than once, sent resounding after her
fugitive son. In the present instance, he was but just in time to
avoid a blow aimed at him with the former of these weapons, and to
make a hasty escape to the house of a friend in the neighbourhood;
where, concerting the best means of baffling pursuit, he decided upon
an instant flight to London. The letters, which I am about to give,
were written, immediately on his arrival in town, to some friends at
Southwell, from whose kind interference in his behalf, it may fairly
be concluded that the blame of the quarrel, whatever it may have been,
did not rest with him. The first is to Mr. Pigot, a young gentleman
about the same age as himself, who had just returned, for the
vacation, from Edinburgh, where he was, at that time, pursuing his
medical studies.

LETTER 2.

TO MR. PIGOT.

"16. Piccadilly, August 9. 1806.

"My dear Pigot,

"Many thanks for your amusing narrative of the last proceedings of
----, who now begins to feel the effects of her folly. I have just
received a penitential epistle, to which, apprehensive of pursuit, I
have despatched a moderate answer, with a _kind_ of promise to return
in a fortnight;--this, however (_entre nous_), I never mean to fulfil.
Seriously, your mother has laid me under great obligations, and you,
with the rest of your family, merit my warmest thanks for your kind
connivance at my escape.

"How did S.B. receive the intelligence? How many _puns_ did he utter
on so _facetious_ an event? In your next inform me on this point, and
what excuse you made to A. You are probably, by this time, tired of
deciphering this hieroglyphical letter;--like Tony Lumpkin, you will
pronounce mine to be a d----d up and down hand. All Southwell, without
doubt, is involved in amazement. Apropos, how does my blue-eyed nun,
the fair ----? is she '_robed in sable garb of woe_?'

"Here I remain at least a week or ten days; previous to my departure
you shall receive my address, but what it will be I have not
determined. My lodgings must be kept secret from Mrs. B. You may
present my compliments to her, and say any attempt to pursue me will
fail, as I have taken measures to retreat immediately to Portsmouth,
on the first intimation of her removal from Southwell. You may add, I
have now proceeded to a friend's house in the country, there to remain
a fortnight.

"I have now _blotted_ (I must not say written) a complete double
letter, and in return shall expect a _monstrous budget_. Without
doubt, the dames of Southwell reprobate the pernicious example I have
shown, and tremble lest their _babes_ should disobey their mandates,
and quit, in dudgeon, their mammas on any grievance. Adieu. When you
begin your next, drop the 'lordship,' and put 'Byron' in its place.

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