by Lord Byron
Eckermann, mindful of Goethe’s hint that Byron had too much empeiria (an excess of mondanité — a this-worldliness), found it hard to read Beppo after Macbeth. “I felt,” he says, “the predominance of a nefarious, empirical world, with which the mind which introduced it to us has in a certain measure associated itself” (Conversations of Goethe, etc., 1874, p. 175). But Beppo must be taken at its own valuation. It is A Venetian Story, and the action takes place behind the scenes of “a comedy of Goldoni.” A less subtle but a more apposite criticism may be borrowed from “Lord Byron’s Combolio” (sic), Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, 1822, xi. 162-165.
“The story that’s in it
May be told in a minute;
But par parenthèse chatting,
On this thing and that thing,
Keeps the shuttlecock flying,
And attention from dying.”
Beppo, a Venetian Story (xcv. stanzas) was published February 28, 1818; and a fifth edition, consisting of xcix. stanzas, was issued May 4, 1818.
Jeffrey, writing in the Edinburgh Review (February, 1818, vol. xxix. pp. 302-310), is unconcerned with regard to Whistlecraft, or any earlier model, but observes “that the nearest approach to it [Beppo] is to be found in some of the tales and lighter pieces of Prior — a few stanzas here and there among the trash and burlesque of Peter Pindar, and in several passages of Mr. Moore, and the author of the facetious miscellany entitled the Twopenny Post Bag.”
Other notices, of a less appreciative kind, appeared in the Monthly Review, March, 1818, vol. 85, pp. 285-290; and in the Eclectic Review, N.S., June, 1818, vol. ix. pp. 555-557.
BEPPO.
I.
‘Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuesday comes about,
The People take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance, ere they grow devout,
However high their rank, or low their station,
With fiddling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masquing,
And other things which may be had for asking.
II.
The moment night with dusky mantle covers
The skies (and the more duskily the better),
The Time less liked by husbands than by lovers
Begins, and Prudery flings aside her fetter;
And Gaiety on restless tiptoe hovers,
Giggling with all the gallants who beset her;
And there are songs and quavers, roaring, humming,
Guitars, and every other sort of strumming.
III.
And there are dresses splendid, but fantastical,
Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews,
And harlequins and clowns, with feats gymnastical,
Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles, and Hindoos;
All kinds of dress, except the ecclesiastical,
All people, as their fancies hit, may choose,
But no one in these parts may quiz the Clergy, —
Therefore take heed, ye Freethinkers! I charge ye.
IV.
You’d better walk about begirt with briars,
Instead of coat and smallclothes, than put on
A single stitch reflecting upon friars,
Although you swore it only was in fun;
They’d haul you o’er the coals, and stir the fires
Of Phlegethon with every mother’s son,
Nor say one mass to cool the cauldron’s bubble
That boiled your bones, unless you paid them double.
V.
But saving this, you may put on whate’er
You like by way of doublet, cape, or cloak,
Such as in Monmouth-street, or in Rag Fair,
Would rig you out in seriousness or joke;
And even in Italy such places are,
With prettier name in softer accents spoke,
For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on
No place that’s called “Piazza” in Great Britain.
VI.
This feast is named the Carnival, which being
Interpreted, implies “farewell to flesh:”
So called, because the name and thing agreeing,
Through Lent they live on fish both salt and fresh.
But why they usher Lent with so much glee in,
Is more than I can tell, although I guess
‘Tis as we take a glass with friends at parting,
In the Stage-Coach or Packet, just at starting.
VII.
And thus they bid farewell to carnal dishes,
And solid meats, and highly spiced ragouts,
To live for forty days on ill-dressed fishes,
Because they have no sauces to their stews;
A thing which causes many “poohs” and “pishes,”
And several oaths (which would not suit the Muse),
From travellers accustomed from a boy
To eat their salmon, at the least, with soy;
VIII.
And therefore humbly I would recommend
“The curious in fish-sauce,” before they cross
The sea, to bid their cook, or wife, or friend,
Walk or ride to the Strand, and buy in gross
(Or if set out beforehand, these may send
By any means least liable to loss),
Ketchup, Soy, Chili-vinegar, and Harvey,
Or, by the Lord! a Lent will well nigh starve ye;
IX.
That is to say, if your religion’s Roman,
And you at Rome would do as Romans do,
According to the proverb, — although no man,
If foreign, is obliged to fast; and you,
If Protestant, or sickly, or a woman,
Would rather dine in sin on a ragout —
Dine and be d — d! I don’t mean to be coarse,
But that’s the penalty, to say no worse.
X.
Of all the places where the Carnival
Was most facetious in the days of yore,
For dance, and song, and serenade, and ball,
And Masque, and Mime, and Mystery, and more
Than I have time to tell now, or at all,
Venice the bell from every city bore, —
And at the moment when I fix my story,
That sea-born city was in all her glory.
XI.
They’ve pretty faces yet, those same Venetians,
Black eyes, arched brows, and sweet expressions still;
Such as of old were copied from the Grecians,
In ancient arts by moderns mimicked ill;
And like so many Venuses of Titian’s
(The best’s at Florence — see it, if ye will,)
They look when leaning over the balcony,
Or stepped from out a picture by Giorgione,
XII.
Whose tints are Truth and Beauty at their best;
And when you to Manfrini’s palace go,
That picture (howsoever fine the rest)
Is loveliest to my mind of all the show;
It may perhaps be also to your zest,
And that’s the cause I rhyme upon it so:
Tis but a portrait of his Son, and Wife,
And self; but such a Woman! Love in life!
XIII.
Love in full life and length, not love ideal,
No, nor ideal beauty, that fine name,
But something better still, so very real,
That the sweet Model must have been the same;
A thing that you would purchase, beg, or steal,
Wer’t not impossible, besides a shame:
The face recalls some face, as ‘twere with pain,
You once have seen, but ne’er will see again;
XIV.
One of those forms which
flit by us, when we
Are young, and fix our eyes on every face;
And, oh! the Loveliness at times we see
In momentary gliding, the soft grace,
The Youth, the Bloom, the Beauty which agree,
In many a nameless being we retrace,
Whose course and home we knew not, nor shall know,
Like the lost Pleiad seen no more below.
XV.
I said that like a picture by Giorgione
Venetian women were, and so they are,
Particularly seen from a balcony,
(For beauty’s sometimes best set off afar)
And there, just like a heroine of Goldoni,
They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar;
And truth to say, they’re mostly very pretty,
And rather like to show it, more’s the pity!
XVI.
For glances beget ogles, ogles sighs,
Sighs wishes, wishes words, and words a letter,
Which flies on wings of light-heeled Mercuries,
Who do such things because they know no better;
And then, God knows what mischief may arise,
When Love links two young people in one fetter,
Vile assignations, and adulterous beds,
Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads.
XVII.
Shakspeare described the sex in Desdemona
As very fair, but yet suspect in fame,
And to this day from Venice to Verona
Such matters may be probably the same,
Except that since those times was never known a
Husband whom mere suspicion could inflame
To suffocate a wife no more than twenty,
Because she had a “Cavalier Servente.”
XVIII.
Their jealousy (if they are ever jealous)
Is of a fair complexion altogether,
Not like that sooty devil of Othello’s,
Which smothers women in a bed of feather,
But worthier of these much more jolly fellows,
When weary of the matrimonial tether
His head for such a wife no mortal bothers,
But takes at once another, or another’s.
XIX.
Didst ever see a Gondola? For fear
You should not, I’ll describe it you exactly:
‘Tis a long covered boat that’s common here,
Carved at the prow, built lightly, but compactly,
Rowed by two rowers, each call’d “Gondolier,”
It glides along the water looking blackly,
Just like a coffin clapt in a canoe,
Where none can make out what you say or do.
XX.
And up and down the long canals they go,
And under the Rialto shoot along,
By night and day, all paces, swift or slow,
And round the theatres, a sable throng,
They wait in their dusk livery of woe, —
But not to them do woeful things belong,
For sometimes they contain a deal of fun,
Like mourning coaches when the funeral’s done.
XXI.
But to my story. — ’Twas some years ago,
It may be thirty, forty, more or less,
The Carnival was at its height, and so
Were all kinds of buffoonery and dress;
A certain lady went to see the show,
Her real name I know not, nor can guess,
And so we’ll call her Laura, if you please,
Because it slips into my verse with ease.
XXII.
She was not old, nor young, nor at the years
Which certain people call a “certain age,”
Which yet the most uncertain age appears,
Because I never heard, nor could engage
A person yet by prayers, or bribes, or tears,
To name, define by speech, or write on page,
The period meant precisely by that word, —
Which surely is exceedingly absurd.
XXIII.
Laura was blooming still, had made the best
Of Time, and Time returned the compliment,
And treated her genteelly, so that, dressed,
She looked extremely well where’er she went;
A pretty woman is a welcome guest,
And Laura’s brow a frown had rarely bent;
Indeed, she shone all smiles, and seemed to flatter
Mankind with her black eyes for looking at her.
XXIV.
She was a married woman; ‘tis convenient,
Because in Christian countries ‘tis a rule
To view their little slips with eyes more lenient;
Whereas if single ladies play the fool,
(Unless within the period intervenient
A well-timed wedding makes the scandal cool)
I don’t know how they ever can get over it,
Except they manage never to discover it.
XXV.
Her husband sailed upon the Adriatic,
And made some voyages, too, in other seas,
And when he lay in Quarantine for pratique
(A forty days’ precaution ‘gainst disease),
His wife would mount, at times, her highest attic,
For thence she could discern the ship with ease:
He was a merchant trading to Aleppo,
His name Giuseppe, called more briefly, Beppo.
XXVI.
He was a man as dusky as a Spaniard,
Sunburnt with travel, yet a portly figure;
Though coloured, as it were, within a tanyard,
He was a person both of sense and vigour —
A better seaman never yet did man yard;
And she, although her manners showed no rigour,
Was deemed a woman of the strictest principle,
So much as to be thought almost invincible.
XXVII.
But several years elapsed since they had met;
Some people thought the ship was lost, and some
That he had somehow blundered into debt,
And did not like the thought of steering home;
And there were several offered any bet,
Or that he would, or that he would not come;
For most men (till by losing rendered sager)
Will back their own opinions with a wager.
XXVIII.
‘Tis said that their last parting was pathetic,
As partings often are, or ought to be,
And their presentiment was quite prophetic,
That they should never more each other see,
(A sort of morbid feeling, half poetic,
Which I have known occur in two or three,)
When kneeling on the shore upon her sad knee
He left this Adriatic Ariadne.
XXIX.
And Laura waited long, and wept a little,
And thought of wearing weeds, as well she might;
She almost lost all appetite for victual,
And could not sleep with ease alone at night;
She deemed the window-frames and shutters brittle
Against a daring housebreaker or sprite,
And so she thought it prudent to connect her
With a vice-husband, chiefly to protect her.
XXX.
She chose, (and what is there they will not choose,
If only you will but oppose their choice?)
Till Beppo should return from his long cruise,
And bid once more her faithful heart rejoice,
A man some women like, and yet abuse —
A Coxcomb was he by the public voice;
A Count of wealth, they said as well as quality,
And in his pleasures of great liberality.
And then he was a Count, and then he knew
Music, and dancing, fiddling, French and Tuscan;
The last not easy, be it known to you,
For few Italians speak the right Etruscan.
He was a critic upon operas, too,
And knew all niceties of sock and buskin;
And no Venetian audience could endure a
Song, scene, or air, when he cried “seccatura!”
XXXII.
His “bravo” was decisive, for that sound
Hushed “Academie” sighed in silent awe;
The fiddlers trembled as he looked around,
For fear of some false note’s detected flaw;
The “Prima Donna’s” tuneful heart would bound,
Dreading the deep damnation of his “Bah!”
Soprano, Basso, even the Contra-Alto,
Wished him five fathom under the Rialto.
XXXIII.
He patronised the Improvisatori,
Nay, could himself extemporise some stanzas,
Wrote rhymes, sang songs, could also tell a story,
Sold pictures, and was skilful in the dance as
Italians can be, though in this their glory
Must surely yield the palm to that which France has;
In short, he was a perfect Cavaliero,
And to his very valet seemed a hero.
XXXIV.
Then he was faithful too, as well as amorous;
So that no sort of female could complain,
Although they’re now and then a little clamorous,
He never put the pretty souls in pain;
His heart was one of those which most enamour us,
Wax to receive, and marble to retain:
He was a lover of the good old school,
Who still become more constant as they cool.
XXXV.
No wonder such accomplishments should turn
A female head, however sage and steady —
With scarce a hope that Beppo could return,
In law he was almost as good as dead, he
Nor sent, nor wrote, nor showed the least concern,
And she had waited several years already: