Don Juan
Page 81
71, 4 savage Salvatore’s In the MS margin Byron wrote a note on this line: ‘Salvatore Rosa, “the wicked necessity of rhyming” obliges me to adapt the name to the verse.’
72, 7–8 ] His bell-mouthed Goblet–
Provoke my thirst–what–ho! of wine a Stoup!>
His bell-mouthed goblet makes me feel quite Danish In Othello lago said that the English excelled the Danes in drinking: ‘Why, he drinks you with facility your Dane dead drunk’ (II iii 76–85).
74, 6 Homer’s catalogue of ships Homer devotes some thirty lines to identifying the many ships that sailed to attack Troy (Iliad II).
75, 4 The pointer ranges, and the sportsman beats See Appendix.
77, 6 And sea coal fires Tn ] The seacoal fires 1823 and later editions
sea coal The distinction was formerly made between ‘sea coal’ (ordinary mineral coal) and charcoal. Londoners may have used the phrase to describe their fuel brought in by boat
77, 8 And what Tn ] As what 1823 and later editions
78, 1 villeggiatura a sojourn in the country. In 1817, to escape the heat of Venice and the stench of the canals, Byron rented a summer house at La Mira, a village on the Brenta River, about seven miles inland from the Venetianlagoon.
78, 5 Even Nimrod’s self might leave the plains of Dura Nebuchadnezzar’s golden image (Daniel iii 1) was set up on the plain of Dura in Babylon. Nimrod, ‘a mighty hunter’, was King of Babylon (Genesis x 9).
78, 6 Melton jacket From Melton Mowbray, headquarters of the Englishchase.
79, 2 me give the sex the pas We give the ladies their right of precedence.
79, 3 The Duchess of Fitz-Fulke, the Countess Crabbey The former may be the high-spirited Elizabeth Foster Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, though like most of Byron’s characters, she is probably a composite.
The Countess Crabbey may be Mary Monckton, afterwards Countess of Cork and Orrery (1746–1840). For most of her long life she was a witty, vivacious and inveterate bluestocking, zealous about cultivating and entertaining famous people. Mrs Siddons was one of her best friends, and Dr Johnson, Burke, Reynolds, Sheridan and Walpole were often her guests; and later Byron, Rogers, Sydney Smith, and others of that generation. Mrs Vesey, another ‘blue’, thought she dressed ‘splendidly and fantastically’, and strove too hard for attention and admiration.
79, 5 Miss Bombazeen, Miss Mackstay, Miss O’Tabbey The first name is a variant of bombasine, a twilled dress material of silk and/or cotton and worsted. If, as OED states, it was ‘much used in mourning’, there is irony in the farce. The root of the Scotch lady’s name (’stays’) OED lists (1795) as a synonym for a corset. The semantic mutations of the Irish woman’s name are all apposite: tabby was (1) silk taffeta, originally striped; (2) a gown; (3) a striped cat; then a female cat; (4) an elderly spinster; (5) a spiteful gossip.
79, 6 Mrs Rabbi, the rich banker’s squaw Harriet Mellon (?1777–1837),an actress, in 1815 married the richest man in London, the eighty-year-old Thomas Coutts, head of the banking house of Coutts &Co. When he died in1822 he left his vast fortune to his wife.
80, 2 lee ] lie 1823 and other editions
On Tn-PM Byron wrote ‘lie’, which he may have confused with ‘lee’ (dregs) and which he probably pronounced ‘lee’, as the pun with ‘elite’ suggests. ‘Lie’, a variant spelling of ‘lye’, a caustic obtained by bleaching wood ashes, does not fit the topic of the stanza or the filtering image of lines 3–4 as well as ‘lee’. Byron seems to contrast grand titles, credentials and appearances with substantial worth and with disguised worthlessness.
81, 5–6 ‘aroint Thee, witch’, or each Medea has her Jason Macbeth I iii 6. Byron says that a regard for appearances is the criterion for social acceptance (lines 3–4) until some husband banishes an unfaithful wife, or a Medea-wife revenges herself upon her unfaithful Jason-husband, thus causing publicscandals.
81, 7 Pulci See Editors’ Note and note to Canto IV 6, 3.
81, 8 Omne tulit… dulci ‘He has won every vote who has blended profit and pleasure’ (Horace, Epistola ad Pisones, Ars Poetica, trans. H. R. Fairclough (1926), 478–9).
82, 5–7 ] Also–a vicious matron
Her way back to the world by
And shine the very Siria of the spheres
a so-so matron one of doubtful character.
Siria Sinus, the brightest star in the sky, is also called the Dog Star. Siria is Byron’s feminine form of the word and hence means ‘bitch star’. He adapted Sirius satirically to the context of feminine spite and ‘plottery’.
83, 4 the Brahmins of the ton Brahmins are Hindus of the highest or sacerdotal caste. ‘Ton’ (which, according to the rhyme, Byron did not give a French pronunciation) originally meant ‘the smart vogue’ and later ‘people of fashion’. Hence the guests at Norman Abbey were the ‘smart set’, the aristocratic élite.
83, 8 Irish absentees Irish landowners who lived in England.
84, 1–4 Parolies too, the legal bully, /… words than war Parolles is a braggart rascal in All’s Well That Ends Well.
On 17 April 1823 Brougham, in a speech on Catholic emancipation, accused Canning of ‘monstrous truckling for the purpose of obtaining office’, and Canning immediately gave him the lie. Brougham apparently did not care to call him out for this insult as the gentlemanly code prescribed, and quasi apologies were exchanged.
Since Byron wrote Canto XIII in early February, he did not know about this episode, but it tends to corroborate Byron’s estimate of his enemy.
84, 7 Lord Pyrrho Possibly Sir Francis Burdett, who was imprisoned in 1820 for his attack on the conduct of the authorities in the Peterloo Massacre. The historical Pyrrho was a Greek Sceptic philosopher of the third century BC.
85, 1 the Duke of Dash Possibly William George Spencer Cavendish, sixth Duke of Devonshire (1790–1858). Byron refers to a visit by ‘the Duke of—’ and says, ‘His Grace is a good, noble, ducal person’ (Journal, 5 December 1813, LJ II 361). The Duke was at Trinity College, Cambridge, in Byron’s time.
85, 2 ‘Aye, every inch a’ duke ‘Ay, every inch a king’ (King Lear IV vi 110).
85, 2–3 twelve peers / Like Charlemagne’s The lists of the twelve peers or paladins of Charlemagne’s court vary in medieval romances; Roland (Orlando), a nephew of the King, was the most famous.
85, 6 six Miss Rawbolds The comic paradox is that though these pretty dears were raw in the sense of unskilled and inexperienced (see also Canto XII 66, 1; Canto XV 40, 4), they were brash and aggressive in quest of a coronet, in ‘a glee’, and with a harp (Canto XIII 107).
85, 7 whose hearts were set ]
86, 3 the preux Chevalier de la Ruse Captain R. H. Gronow identifies thevaliant Knight of Craft with the Comte de Montrond, ‘back-stairs diplomatist,wit, gambler, and man of fashion’ (Reminiscences and Recollections (1892), I 234–40). See note to Canto VII 33, 2.
87, 1 Dick Dubious Possibly Sir James Mackintosh (1765–1832), a versatile and popular lecturer. He had studied medicine and law and was interested in philosophy, science and literature. As a political liberal he had supported Home Tooke for election in 1796 and for many years advocated parliamentary reform. Byron liked him and saw him often in London.
87, 3 Angle, the soi-disant mathematician Perhaps Charles Babbage (1792–1871), who obtained a government grant for making a calculating machine in 1823.
87, 5 Reverend Rodomont Precisian Rodomont was the arrogant and boastful Saracen leader in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso. A precisian, one who was rigidly precise in religious observances, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was synonymous with Puritan. Byron may also be punning with Priscian; see note to Canto XV 24, 6.
87, 7 Lord Augustus Fitz-Plantagenet Possibly George Henry Fitzroy, fourth Duke of Grafton (1760–1844), a member of the Jockey Club and a racing gambler.
88, 1 Jack Jargon Colonel (afterwards Sir) James Macdonell (d. 1857), ‘a man of colossa
l stature’, who was at the Battle of Waterloo (H. R. Gronow, Reminiscences (1892) I 76–7).
88, 2 General Fireface Sir George Prevost (1767–1816), governor-general of British North America, who intervened, unfortunately for his reputation, in the British military operation during the War of 1812.
88, 4 Jefferies Hardsman George Hardinge, MP (1744–1816), one of the Welsh judges, noted as a wit.
89, 7 hornet ]
90, 2–8 An orator…/… was made’ This picture of the young orator contains echoes of Byron’s own experience in the House of Lords, where his maiden speech was much approved, at least by the Whig politicians.
91, 6–7 ] With wit to
92, 1 There also] These also 1823
92, 2 Longbow from Ireland, Strongbow from the Tweed Commentators have usually identified these as allusions to John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) and Lord Thomas Erskine (1750–1823). Both were notable wits, orators and political liberals, whose careers and talents Byron admired. Curran was the more erratic and improvident, and fought five duels. Erskine, famous for his puns and epigrams, and his vanity, was the friend of Sheridan and Fox, and, though unimpressive in the House of Commons, was an able trial lawyer, having defended Thomas Paine among others. Byron had met both Curran and Erskine in London society, and later wrote about them in ‘Detached Thoughts’, where he was critical of Erskine, but enthusiastic about Curran (LJV 412, 421, 429–30, 455–6).
F. L. Beaty has suggested that Byron was thinking of popular national characteristics: ‘the Irish… as naturally inclined to poetry as the Scots to philosophy’. Beaty proposed that Francis Rawdon-Hastings (1754–1826), second Earl of Moira, was the actual Longbow. Byron met this advocate of Ireland and Catholic emancipation at Holland House and probably had read the verse-lampoon of him in Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin, with an illustration by James Gillray, entitled ‘Lord Longbow, the Alarmist, discovering the Miseries of Ireland’. Both the verse and the drawing derided the Earl’s fondness for strange, far-fetched tales (one who drew the long bow; see note to Canto VIII 138, 6–7). Beaty also proposed Sir James Mackintosh (see note to XIII 87, 1) as a prototype of Strongbow because he seemed to memorize speeches for evening parties and because his wit relied on erudition and was neither original nor imaginative. Finally he regarded the differentiation of Longbow and Strongbow in stanzas 92–3 as Byron’s last commentary on the dichotomy of Romantic and neoclassical poetry. The imagery of the two stanzas implies the merits and limitations both of an inventive imagination and of rational, realistic imitation (‘Byron’s Longbow and Strongbow’, Studies in English Literature XII (Autumn, 1972), 653–63).
92, 8 Strongbow’s best things might have come from Cato Byron may refer to Addison’s neoclassical tragedy, Cato, which Dr Johnson said was polished and pure but not vigorous. The allusion sets a contrast between (1) the precise, disciplined language, as well as the borrowed platitudes of Strongbow’s conversation and (2) the eccentric and fanciful talk of Longbow, who some times stumbled. F. L. Beaty (p. 662) cited Or Johnson’s Lives of the English Poets (London, 1959), I 445–6, 448. But Byron may have been thinking of the younger Cato himself, an intellectual and aristocratic stoic. Cato was a friend of Cicero, who eulogized him, and a staunch opponent of the ambition of Julius Caesar, who denounced him. After Cato was defeated, he arranged for the escape of his supporters and then killed himself.
93, 2 wild as an Aeolian harp An Aeolian harp or lyre (named after Aeolus, god of the winds) was a box or frame fitted with tuned strings, which produced musical tones when the wind blew across them. This instrument provided a favourite image for the Romantic poets, especially Coleridge, The Eolian Harp (1796), Dejection: An Ode (1802) 6–8, 97–117; Shelley, Prometheus Unbound (1820) IV 188.
94, 6 Congreve’s fool could vie with Moliére’s bête For example, Sir Joseph Wittol, the foolish knight in Congreve’s comedy The Old Bachelor (1693), allows himself to be married to Silvia, the forsaken mistress of Vainglove, under the impression that she is the wealthy Araminta. Among Moliére’s fools, Byron may be remembering Monsieur Jourdain in Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), who thought that manners would make him a gentleman.
95, 4–5 and there is nought to cull/ Of folly’s fruit ]
96, 7–8 Mrs Adams, where she cries / That Scriptures out of church are blasphemies In Book IV of Fielding’s Joseph Andrews, near the end of ch. 11, after Mrs Adams refused to serve a meal, Parson Adams quoted many Biblical texts to prove that a wife must obey her husband. She retorted that ‘it was a blasphemy to talk Scripture out of church; that such things were very proper to be said in the pulpit; but that it was profane to talk them in common discourse’. Byron observed, ‘This dogma was broached to… the best Christian in any book’ (1823).
97, 4 Kit Cat Richard Sharp (1759–1835), known as ‘Conversation Sharp’, visited Byron in 1816 at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland. Byron in his 1821 diary recalled him as a very clever man (LJ V 161).
97, 6–7 ‘List, oh list! / Alas, poor Ghost’ Hamlet I v 4 and 22.
97, 8 bons mots Tn ] bon mots 1823 and some later editions
98, 4 Nor bate (abate) their hearers ] Nor bate (read bait) their hearers
99, 8 much depends on dinner ‘… he talked of good eating with uncommon satisfaction.… “I mind my belly very studiously, and very carefully; for I look upon it, that he who does not mind his belly will hardly mind any thing else….” I never knew any man who relished good eating more than he did. When at table he was totally absorbed in the business of the moment’ (Boswell, entry for 5 August 1763, 1, 467–8). A note here quotes Mrs Thrale’s (Piozzi) report of Johnson’s remark that ‘a man seldom thinks with more earnestness of any thing than he does of his dinner’.
103, 1 gêné constrained.
104, 2 ]
105, 2 The earth has nothing like a she-epistle Judging from the quantity of letters written to Byron by adoring women, the poet knew whereof he spoke. See To Lord Byron: Feminine Profiles, ed. George Pasten and Peter Quennell (1939), which contains a selection from John Murray’s archives in Albemarle Street, London.
105, 6 ] ]
But full of wisdom as Ulysses’ whistle
[first variant] Though Byron may only have linked the image of the rose-thistle-entwining to the mystery of a ‘female missal’ and the ambiguity of a religious creed, he may also have had in mind the incongruity of an alliance between the Scottish Knights of the Order of the Thistle and the Irish Knights of the Order of St Patrick. Roses alternated with harps on the collar of the Order of St Patrick.
105, 7 poor Dolon While attempting to reconnoitre the Greek fleet, Dolon was noticed at once by Diomedes and Odysseus. They hid until he dashed by toward the coast and then gave chase. Dolon, hearing their footsteps and thinking them Trojan friends, stopped running (he was not lured by a whistle), until the two Greeks were close enough for him to realize his blunder. They overtook him, taunted and quizzed the terrified boy, until Dolon, foolishly hoping for mercy, confided information about the Trojan army. Diomedes then slew him, took advantage of the disclosure and killed thirteen sleeping foes. While Diomedes was engaged in this slaughter, Odysseus gathered the horses of the slain warriors and then whistled as a signal to his companion that he was ready to return to the fleet with the plunder. Byron, who usually relied on memory for his allusions and did not pause to consult his sources, transferred the whistle to an earlier part of the episode, where it became not a signal to Diomedes but a deception of Dolon (Homer, Iliad X, trans. E. V. Rieu (1950), 189–96).
106, 5–8 angling… / Izaak Walton…/… to pull it ‘[The hook in his gullet] would have taught him humanity at least. This sentimental savage, whom… [people quote] to show the
ir sympathy for innocent sports and old songs, teaches how to sew up frogs; and break their legs by way of experiment’ A fisherman ‘may talk about the beauties of nature’, but he thinks only of his dish of fish’, and a ‘single bite is worth to him more than all the scenery around’. Going after tuna, shark, or whale might be perilous and noble, and trawling and netting be more humane and useful, but angling is ‘the crudest, the coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports…. No angler can be a good man’ (Byron, 1823).
109, 2 ] Discussed
110, 3 Phidian forms Phidias, the Greek sculptor of the Periclean Age (fifth century BC), supervised the construction of the Parthenon and carved the statue of Pallas Athene which was placed in it.
110, 4–7 no Squire Westerns as of old And our Sophias…… Tom Jones Byron contrasts the natural vigour of an immoral past with the artificial flabbiness of the immoral present Squire Western in Fielding’s novel was an earthy landowner, hearty, blunt and stubborn. His daughter Sophia, unwilling to marry a man she despised, boldly ran away from home. Tom Jones had several amours, but was not mean and treacherous like his respectable rival Blifil.
111, 7 ]
CANTO XIV
Byron began the first draft (B) of Canto XIV at Genoa on 23 February 1823 and finished it on 4 March. Stanza 94 was written somewhat later than the others. The canto was published by John Hunt with XII and XIII on 17 December 1823. All variants are taken from B.
1, 6–8 Saturn ate his progeny…/… he made no bones Saturn (Cronus) devoured all his children except Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto, whom his wife, Rhea, concealed from him. At their birth she gave him large stones, which he swallowed without perceiving the deceit
3, 1 I know nought see note to Canto VII 5, 2.