Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series
Page 53
As princely paunches offer to her touch.
Pleased round the chalky floor how well they trip
One hand reposing on the royal hip!
The other to the shoulder no less royal
Ascending with affection truly loyal!
Thus front to front the partners move or stand, 200
The foot may rest, but none withdraw the hand;
And all in turn may follow in their rank,
The Earl of — Asterisk — and Lady — Blank;
Sir — Such-a-one — with those of fashion’s host,
For whose blest surnames — vide “Morning Post.”
(Or if for that impartial print too late,
Search Doctors’ Commons six months from my date) —
Thus all and each, in movement swift or slow,
The genial contact gently undergo;
Till some might marvel, with the modest Turk, 210
If “nothing follows all this palming work?”
True, honest Mirza! — you may trust my rhyme —
Something does follow at a fitter time;
The breast thus publicly resigned to man,
In private may resist him — if it can.
O ye who loved our Grandmothers of yore,
Fitzpatrick, Sheridan, and many more!
And thou, my Prince! whose sovereign taste and will
It is to love the lovely beldames still!
Thou Ghost of Queensberry! whose judging Sprite 220
Satan may spare to peep a single night,
Pronounce — if ever in your days of bliss
Asmodeus struck so bright a stroke as this;
To teach the young ideas how to rise,
Flush in the cheek, and languish in the eyes;
Rush to the heart, and lighten through the frame,
With half-told wish, and ill-dissembled flame,
For prurient Nature still will storm the breast —
Who, tempted thus, can answer for the rest?
But ye — who never felt a single thought 230
For what our Morals are to be, or ought;
Who wisely wish the charms you view to reap,
Say — would you make those beauties quite so cheap?
Hot from the hands promiscuously applied,
Round the slight waist, or down the glowing side,
Where were the rapture then to clasp the form
From this lewd grasp and lawless contact warm?
At once Love’s most endearing thought resign,
To press the hand so pressed by none but thine;
To gaze upon that eye which never met 240
Another’s ardent look without regret;
Approach the lip which all, without restraint,
Come near enough — if not to touch — to taint;
If such thou lovest — love her then no more,
Or give — like her — caresses to a score;
Her Mind with these is gone, and with it go
The little left behind it to bestow.
Voluptuous Waltz! and dare I thus blaspheme?
Thy bard forgot thy praises were his theme.
Terpsichore forgive! — at every Ball 250
My wife now waltzes — and my daughters shall;
My son — (or stop — ’tis needless to inquire —
These little accidents should ne’er transpire;
Some ages hence our genealogic tree
Will wear as green a bough for him as me) —
Waltzing shall rear, to make our name amends
Grandsons for me — in heirs to all his friends.
THE BLUES
A LITERARY ECLOGUE
“Nimium ne crede colori.” — Virgil, [Ecl. ii. 17]
O trust not, ye beautiful creatures, to hue, Though your hair were as red, as your stockings are blue.
INTRODUCTION
Byron’s correspondence does not explain the mood in which he wrote The Blues, or afford the slightest hint or clue to its motif or occasion. In a letter to Murray, dated Ravenna, August 7, 1821, he writes, “I send you a thing which I scribbled off yesterday, a mere buffoonery, to quiz ‘The Blues.’ If published it must be anonymously…. You may send me a proof if you think it worth the trouble.” Six weeks later, September 20, he had changed his mind. “You need not,” he says, “send The Blues, which is a mere buffoonery not meant for publication.” With these intimations our knowledge ends, and there is nothing to show why in August, 1821, he took it into his head “to quiz The Blues,” or why, being so minded, he thought it worth while to quiz them in so pointless and belated a fashion. We can but guess that an allusion in a letter from England, an incident at a conversazione at Ravenna, or perhaps the dialogues in Peacock’s novels, Melincourt and Nightmare Abbey, brought to his recollection the half-modish, half-literary coteries of the earlier years of the Regency, and that he sketches the scenes and persons of his eclogue not from life, but from memory.
In the Diary of 1813, 1814, there is more than one mention of the “Blues.” For instance, November 27, 1813, he writes, “Sotheby is a Littérateur, the oracle of the Coteries of the * *’s, Lydia White (Sydney Smith’s ‘Tory Virgin’), Mrs. Wilmot (she, at least, is a swan, and might frequent a purer stream), Lady Beaumont and all the Blues, with Lady Charlemont at their head.” Again on December 1, “To-morrow there is a party purple at the ‘blue’ Miss Berry’s. Shall I go? um! — I don’t much affect your blue-bottles; — but one ought to be civil…. Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian butterfly of book-learning Lady Charlemont will be there” (see Letters, 1898, ii. 333, 358, note 2).
Byron was, perhaps, a more willing guest at literary entertainments than he professed to be. “I met him,” says Sir Walter Scott (Memoirs of the Life, etc., 1838, ii. 167), “frequently in society…. Some very agreeable parties I can recollect, particularly one at Sir George Beaumont’s, where the amiable landlord had assembled some persons distinguished for talent. Of these I need only mention the late Sir Humphry Davy…. Mr. Richard Sharpe and Mr. Rogers were also present.”
Again, Miss Berry, in her Journal (1866, in. 49) records, May 8, 1815, that “Lord and Lady Byron persuaded me to go with them to Miss [Lydia] White . Never have I seen a more imposing convocation of ladies arranged in a circle than when we entered … Lord Byron brought me home. He stayed to supper.” If he did not affect “your blue-bottles,” he was on intimate terms with Madame de Staël, “the Begum of Literature,” as Moore called her; with the Contessa d’Albrizzi (the De Staël of Italy); with Mrs. Wilmot, the inspirer of “She walks in beauty like the night;” with Mrs. Shelley; with Lady Blessington. Moreover, to say nothing of his “mathematical wife,” who was as “blue as ether,” the Countess Guiccioli could not only read and “inwardly digest” Corinna (see letter to Moore, January 2, 1820), but knew the Divina Commedia by heart, and was a critic as well as an inspirer of her lover’s poetry.
If it is difficult to assign a reason or occasion for the composition of The Blues, it is a harder, perhaps an impossible, task to identify all the dramatis personæ. Botherby, Lady Bluemount, and Miss Diddle are, obviously, Sotheby, Lady Beaumont, and Lydia White. Scamp the Lecturer may be Hazlitt, who had incurred Byron’s displeasure by commenting on his various and varying estimates of Napoleon (see Lectures on the English Poets, 1818, p. 304, and Don Juan, Canto 1. stanza ii. line 7, note to Buonaparte). Inkel seems to be meant for Byron himself, and Tracy, a friend, not a Lake poet, for Moore. Sir Richard and Lady Bluebottle may possibly symbolize Lord and Lady Holland; and Miss Lilac is, certainly, Miss Milbanke, the “Annabella” of Byron’s courtship, not the “moral Clytemnestra” of his marriage and separation.
The Blues was published anonymously in the third number of the Liberal, which appeared April 26, 1823. The “Eclogue” was not attributed to Byron, and met with greater contempt than it deserved. In the Noctes Ambrosiance (Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, May, 1823, v
ol. xiii. p. 607), the third number of the Liberal is dismissed with the remark, “The last Number contains not one line of Byron’s! Thank God! he has seen his error, and kicked them out.” Brief but contemptuous notices appeared in the Literary Chronicle, April 26, and the Literary Gazette, May 3, 1823; while a short-lived periodical, named the Literary Register (May 3, quoted at length in John Bull, May 4, 1823), implies that the author (i.e. Leigh Hunt) would be better qualified to “catch the manners” of Lisson Grove than of May Fair. It is possible that this was the “last straw,” and that the reception of The Blues hastened Byron’s determination to part company with the profitless and ill-omened Liberal.
THE BLUES
A LITERARY ECLOGUE.
ECLOGUE THE FIRST.
London. — Before the Door of a Lecture Room.
Enter Tracy, meeting Inkel.
Ink. You’re too late.
Tra. Is it over?
Ink. Nor will be this hour.
But the benches are crammed, like a garden in flower.
With the pride of our belles, who have made it the fashion;
So, instead of “beaux arts,” we may say “la belle passion”
For learning, which lately has taken the lead in
The world, and set all the fine gentlemen reading.
Tra. I know it too well, and have worn out my patience
With studying to study your new publications.
There’s Vamp, Scamp, and Mouthy, and Wordswords and Co.
With their damnable — —
Ink. Hold, my good friend, do you know 10
Whom you speak to?
Tra. Right well, boy, and so does “the Row:”
You’re an author — a poet —
Ink. And think you that I
Can stand tamely in silence, to hear you decry
The Muses?
Tra. Excuse me: I meant no offence
To the Nine; though the number who make some pretence
To their favours is such — — but the subject to drop,
I am just piping hot from a publisher’s shop,
(Next door to the pastry-cook’s; so that when I
Cannot find the new volume I wanted to buy
On the bibliopole’s shelves, it is only two paces, 20
As one finds every author in one of those places:)
Where I just had been skimming a charming critique,
So studded with wit, and so sprinkled with Greek!
Where your friend — you know who — has just got such a threshing,
That it is, as the phrase goes, extremely “refreshing.”
What a beautiful word!
Ink. Very true; ‘tis so soft
And so cooling — they use it a little too oft;
And the papers have got it at last — but no matter.
So they’ve cut up our friend then?
Tra. Not left him a tatter —
Not a rag of his present or past reputation, 30
Which they call a disgrace to the age, and the nation.
Ink. I’m sorry to hear this! for friendship, you know —
Our poor friend! — but I thought it would terminate so.
Our friendship is such, I’ll read nothing to shock it.
You don’t happen to have the Review in your pocket?
Tra. No; I left a round dozen of authors and others
(Very sorry, no doubt, since the cause is a brother’s)
All scrambling and jostling, like so many imps,
And on fire with impatience to get the next glimpse.
Ink. Let us join them.
Tra. What, won’t you return to the lecture? 40
Ink. Why the place is so crammed, there’s not room for a spectre.
Besides, our friend Scamp is to-day so absurd —
Tra. How can you know that till you hear him?
Ink. I heard
Quite enough; and, to tell you the truth, my retreat
Was from his vile nonsense, no less than the heat.
Tra. I have had no great loss then?
Ink. Loss! — such a palaver!
I’d inoculate sooner my wife with the slaver
Of a dog when gone rabid, than listen two hours
To the torrent of trash which around him he pours,
Pumped up with such effort, disgorged with such labour, 50
That — — come — do not make me speak ill of one’s neighbour.
Tra. I make you!
Ink. Yes, you! I said nothing until
You compelled me, by speaking the truth — —
Tra. To speak ill?
Is that your deduction?
Ink. When speaking of Scamp ill,
I certainly follow, not set an example.
The fellow’s a fool, an impostor, a zany.
Tra. And the crowd of to-day shows that one fool makes many.
But we two will be wise.
Ink. Pray, then, let us retire.
Tra. I would, but — —
Ink. There must be attraction much higher
Than Scamp, or the Jew’s harp he nicknames his lyre, 60
To call you to this hotbed.
Tra. I own it — ’tis true —
A fair lady — —
Ink. A spinster?
Tra. Miss Lilac.
Ink. The Blue!
Tra. The heiress! The angel!
Ink. The devil! why, man,
Pray get out of this hobble as fast as you can.
You wed with Miss Lilac! ‘twould be your perdition:
She’s a poet, a chymist, a mathematician.
Tra. I say she’s an angel.
Ink. Say rather an angle.
If you and she marry, you’ll certainly wrangle.
I say she’s a Blue, man, as blue as the ether.
Tra. And is that any cause for not coming together? 70
Ink. Humph! I can’t say I know any happy alliance
Which has lately sprung up from a wedlock with science.
She’s so learnéd in all things, and fond of concerning
Herself in all matters connected with learning,
That — —
Tra. What?
Ink. I perhaps may as well hold my tongue;
But there’s five hundred people can tell you you’re wrong.
Tra. You forget Lady Lilac’s as rich as a Jew.
Ink. Is it miss or the cash of mamma you pursue?
Tra. Why, Jack, I’ll be frank with you — something of both.
The girl’s a fine girl.
Ink. And you feel nothing loth 80
To her good lady-mother’s reversion; and yet
Her life is as good as your own, I will bet.
Tra. Let her live, and as long as she likes; I demand
Nothing more than the heart of her daughter and hand.
Ink. Why, that heart’s in the inkstand — that hand on the pen.
Tra. A propos — Will you write me a song now and then?
Ink. To what purpose?
Tra. You know, my dear friend, that in prose
My talent is decent, as far as it goes;
But in rhyme — —
Ink. You’re a terrible stick, to be sure.
Tra. I own it; and yet, in these times, there’s no lure 90
For the heart of the fair like a stanza or two;
And so, as I can’t, will you furnish a few?
Ink. In your name?
Tra. In my name. I will copy them out,
To slip into her hand at the very next rout.
Ink. Are you so far advanced as to hazard this?
Tra. Why,
Do you think me subdued by a Blue-stocking’s eye,
So far as to tremble to tell her in rhyme
What I’ve told her in prose, at the least, as sublime?
Ink. As sublime! If i be so, no need of my Muse.
Ink. As sublime! — Mr. Tracy — I’ve nothing to say.
Stick to prose — As sublime!! — but I wish you good day.
Tra. Nay, stay, my dear fellow — consider — I’m wrong;
I own it; but, prithee, compose me the song.
Ink. As sublime!!
Tra. I but used the expression in haste.
Ink. That may be, Mr. Tracy, but shows damned bad taste.
Tra. I own it, I know it, acknowledge it — what
Can I say to you more?
Ink. I see what you’d be at:
You disparage my parts with insidious abuse,
Till you think you can turn them best to your own use. 110
Tra. And is that not a sign I respect them?
Ink. Why that
To be sure makes a difference.
Tra. I know what is what:
And you, who’re a man of the gay world, no less
Than a poet of t’other, may easily guess
That I never could mean, by a word, to offend
A genius like you, and, moreover, my friend.
Ink. No doubt; you by this time should know what is due
To a man of — — but come — let us shake hands.
Tra. You knew,
And you know, my dear fellow, how heartily I,
Whatever you publish, am ready to buy. 120
Ink. That’s my bookseller’s business; I care not for sale;
Indeed the best poems at first rather fail.
There were Renegade’s epics, and Botherby’s plays,
And my own grand romance — —
Tra. Had its full share of praise.
I myself saw it puffed in the “Old Girl’s Review.”
Ink. What Review?
Tra. Tis the English “Journal de Trevoux;”
A clerical work of our Jesuits at home.
Have you never yet seen it?
Ink. That pleasure’s to come.
Tra. Make haste then.
Ink. Why so?
Tra. I have heard people say
That it threatened to give up the ghost t’other day. 130
Ink. Well, that is a sign of some spirit.
Tra. No doubt.
Shall you be at the Countess of Fiddlecome’s rout?
Ink. I’ve a card, and shall go: but at present, as soon
As friend Scamp shall be pleased to step down from the moon,
(Where he seems to be soaring in search of his wits),
And an interval grants from his lecturing fits,