by Lord Byron
[Footnote 14: Tom Belcher (1783-1854), younger brother of Jem Belcher the champion, fought and won his first fight in London, in 1804, against Warr. The fight took place in Tothill Fields, Westminster. Twice beaten by Dutch Sam (Elias Samuel), in 1806 and 1807, he never held the championship, which a man of his height (5 ft. 9 ins.) and weight (10 st. 12 lbs.) could scarcely hope to win. But he repeatedly established the superiority of art over strength, and was one of the most popular and respectable pugilists of the day. Under his management the Castle Tavern at Holborn, in which he succeeded Gregson (page 207 [Letter 108], [Foot]note 1 ), was the head-quarters of pugilism.]
[Footnote 15: Sir Henry Smyth, Baronet, of Trinity Hall, A.M. 1805, was found between eleven and twelve at night, on May 11, 1805, “inciting to a disturbance” at the shop of a Mrs. Thrower on Market Hill. Other members of the University seem to have been equally guilty. The sentence of the Vice-Chancellor and Heads was “that he be suspended from his degree and banished from the University.” The others were admonished only; so it was clearly considered that Smyth was the ring-leader.]
85. — To Henry Drury.
Dorant’s Hotel, Jan. 13, 1808.
My Dear Sir, — Though the stupidity of my servants, or the porter of the house, in not showing you up stairs (where I should have joined you directly), prevented me the pleasure of seeing you yesterday, I hoped to meet you at some public place in the evening. However, my stars decreed otherwise, as they generally do, when I have any favour to request of them. I think you would have been surprised at my figure, for, since our last meeting, I am reduced four stone in weight. I then weighed fourteen stone seven pound, and now only ten stone and a half. I have disposed of my superfluities by means of hard exercise and abstinence.
Should your Harrow engagements allow you to visit town between this and February, I shall be most happy to see you in Albemarle Street. If I am not so fortunate, I shall endeavour to join you for an afternoon at Harrow, though, I fear, your cellar will by no means contribute to my cure. As for my worthy preceptor, Dr. B., our encounter would by no means prevent the mutual endearments he and I were wont to lavish on each other. We have only spoken once since my departure from Harrow in 1805, and then he politely told Tatersall I was not a proper associate for his pupils. This was long before my strictures in verse; but, in plain prose, had I been some years older, I should have held my tongue on his perfections. But, being laid on my back, when that schoolboy thing was written — or rather dictated — expecting to rise no more, my physician having taken his sixteenth fee, and I his prescription, I could not quit this earth without leaving a memento of my constant attachment to Butler in gratitude for his manifold good offices.
I meant to have been down in July; but thinking my appearance, immediately after the publication, would be construed into an insult, I directed my steps elsewhere. Besides, I heard that some of the boys had got hold of my Libellus, contrary to my wishes certainly, for I never transmitted a single copy till October, when I gave one to a boy, since gone, after repeated importunities. You will, I trust, pardon this egotism. As you had touched on the subject I thought some explanation necessary. Defence I shall not attempt, Hic murus aheneus esto, nil conscire sibi — and “so on” (as Lord Baltimore said on his trial for a rape) — I have been so long at Trinity as to forget the conclusion of the line; but though I cannot finish my quotation, I will my letter, and entreat you to believe me, gratefully and affectionately, etc.
P.S. — I will not lay a tax on your time by requiring an answer, lest you say, as Butler said to Tatersall (when I had written his reverence an impudent epistle on the expression before mentioned), viz. “that I wanted to draw him into a correspondence.”
[Footnote 1: See page 12 [Letter 4], [Foot]note 1 ; and page 41
[Letter 14], [Foot] note 2 .]
[Footnote 2: Dr. Butler, Head-master of Harrow (see page 58 [Letter 22],
[Foot]note 1).]
[Footnote 3: See page 59 [Letter 22], [Foot]note 1 .]
[Footnote 4: Francis Calvert, seventh Lord Baltimore (1731-1771), was charged with decoying a young milliner, named Sarah Woodcock, to his house, and with rape. On February 12, 1768, he was committed for trial at the Spring assizes, was tried at Kingston, March 26, 1768, and acquitted. The story is the subject of a romance, ‘Injured Innocence; or the Rape of Sarah Woodcock;’ A Tale, by S. J., Esq., of Magdalen College, Oxford. New York (no date).
“I thank God,” Lord Baltimore is reported to have said, “that I have had firmness and resolution to meet my accusers face to face, and provoke an enquiry into my conduct, ‘Hic murus aheneus esto, nil conscire sibi’“
(‘Ann. Register’ for 1768, p. 234). His body lay in state at Exeter Change, previous to its interment at Epsom (Leigh Hunt’s ‘The Town’, edit. 1893, p. 191).]
86. — To John Cam Hobhouse.
Newstead Abbey, Notts, January 16, 1808.
My Dear Hobhouse, — I do not know how the dens-descended Davies came to mention his having received a copy of my epistle to you, but I addressed him and you on the same evening, and being much incensed at the account I had received from Wallace, I communicated the contents to the Birdmore, though without any of that malice wherewith you charge me. I shall leave my card at Batts, and hope to see you in your progress to the North.
I have lately discovered Scrope’s genealogy to be ennobled by a collateral tie with the Beardmore, Chirurgeon and Dentist to Royalty, and that the town of Southwell contains cousins of Scrope’s, who disowned them (I grieve to speak it) on visiting that city in my society.
How I found this out I will disclose, the first time “we three meet again.” But why did he conceal his lineage? “Ah, my dear H., it was cruel, it was insulting, it was unnecessary.”
I have (notwithstanding your kind invitation to Wallace) been alone since the 8th of December; nothing of moment has occurred since our anniversary row. I shall be in London on the 19th; there are to be oxen roasted and sheep boiled on the 22nd, with ale and uproar for the mobility; a feast is also providing for the tenantry. For my own part, I shall know as little of the matter as a corpse of the funeral solemnized in its honour.
A letter addressed to Reddish’s will find me. I still intend publishing the Bards, but I have altered a good deal of the “Body of the Book,” added and interpolated, with some excisions; your lines still stand, and in all there will appear 624 lines.
I should like much to see your Essay upon Entrails: is there any honorary token of silver gilt? any cups, or pounds sterling attached to the prize, besides glory? I expect to see you with a medal suspended from your button-hole, like a Croix de St. Louis.
Fletcher’s father is deceased, and has left his son tway cottages, value ten pounds per annum. I know not how it is, but Fletch., though only the third brother, conceives himself entitled to all the estates of the defunct, and I have recommended him to a lawyer, who, I fear, will triumph in the spoils of this ancient family. A Birthday Ode has been addressed to me by a country schoolmaster, in which I am likened to the Sun, or Sol, as he classically saith; the people of Newstead are compared to Laplanders. I am said to be a Baron, and a Byron, the truth of which is indisputable. Feronia is again to reign (she must have some woods to govern first), but it is altogether a very pleasant performance, and the author is as superior to Pye, as George Gordon to George Guelph. To be sure some of the lines are too short, but then, to make amends, the Alexandrines have from fifteen to seventeen syllables, so we may call them Alexandrines the great.
I shall be glad to hear from you, and beg you to believe me,
Yours very truly,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: John Cam Hobhouse (1786-1869), created in 1851 Baron Broughton de Gyfford, was the eldest son of Mr. Benjamin Hobhouse, created a baronet in 1812, and M.P. (from 1797 to 1818) successively for Bletchingley, Grampound, and Hindon. From a school at Bristol, John Cam Hobhouse was sent to Westminster, and thence to Trinity, Cambridge, where
he won (1808) the Hulsean Prize for an essay on “Sacrifices,” and made acquaintance with Byron, as related in Letter 84. In 1809 he published a poetical miscellany, consisting of sixty-five pieces, under the title of ‘Imitations and Translations from the Ancient and Modern Classics, together with original Poems never before published’ (London, 1809, 8vo). (For Byron’s nine contributions, see ‘Poems’, vol. i., Bibliographical Note.) In 1809-10 he was Byron’s travelling companion abroad (see ‘A Journey through Albania, etc.’ London, 1813, 4to).
In 1813 he travelled with Douglas Kinnaird in Sweden, Germany, Austria, and Italy; in 1814 he was at Paris with the allied armies; and in April, 1815, was there again till the second Napoleonic war broke out, returning to witness the second restoration of the Bourbons (see his ‘Letters — written by an Englishman resident in Paris, etc.’ Anon., London, 1816, 2 vols., 8vo). During 1814 he was much with Byron in London. He notes going with him to Drury Lane, and being introduced with him to Kean (May 19); dining with him at Lord Tavistock’s (June 4); dining with him at Douglas Kinnaird’s, to meet Kean (December 14). He was Byron’s best man at his marriage at Seaham (January 2, 1815), and it was to him that the bride said, “If I am not happy, it will be my own fault.” He was the last person who shook hands with Byron on Dover pier, when the latter left England in 1816. Later in the same year he was with him at the Villa Diodati, on the Lake of Geneva, and travelled with him to Venice. To him Byron dedicated ‘The Siege of Corinth’, In the next year he was again with Byron in the Villa La Mira on the banks of the Brenta, and at Venice, where he prepared the commentary on the fourth canto of ‘Childe Harold’, which Byron dedicated to him. Part of the notes were published separately (‘Historical Illustrations, etc.’ London, 1818, 8vo). In 1818 Hobhouse stood for Westminster, but was defeated by George Lamb, the representative of the official Whigs. He was an original member of “The Rota Club,” afterwards known as “Harrington’s,” to which Michael Bruce, Douglas Kinnaird, Scrope Davies, and others belonged, and which Byron, writing from Italy, expressed a wish to join. He had now embarked on political life. His pamphlet, ‘A Defence of the People’ (1819), was followed in the same year by ‘A Trifling Mistake’, which was declared by the House of Commons to be a breach of privilege. In consequence, he was committed to Newgate. The death of George III., and the dissolution of Parliament, set him free. He contested Westminster, won the seat with Sir Francis Burdett as his colleague, and represented it for thirteen years. He took the part of Queen Caroline against the Government. At the Queen’s funeral (August 7, 1821) he attended the procession which escorted her body (August 13) from Brandenburg House to Harwich, and saw the coffin placed upon the vessel.
His political career was long, independent, useful, and distinguished, and he specially associated himself with such questions as the shortening of the hours for infant labour, the opening up of metropolitan vestries, and the subject of parliamentary reform. In 1832 he was made a Privy Councillor, and became Secretary at War in Lord Grey’s Ministry. This post, finding himself unable to effect essential reforms at the War Office, he exchanged for that of Secretary for Ireland (1833); but he resigned both his office and his seat a few weeks later, being opposed to the Government on a question of taxation. In 1834 he joined Lord Melbourne’s Government as First Commissioner of Woods and Forests, with a seat in the Cabinet. In Lord Melbourne’s second administration, and again in Lord J. Russell’s Government of 1846, he was President of the Board of Control. On his retirement from public life, in 1852, he received high recognition of his official services from the Queen, who conferred on him the Grand Cross of the Bath and a peerage. Hobhouse was present at Her Majesty’s first Council, and is said to have originated the phrase, “Her Majesty’s Opposition.”
In 1822 he travelled in Italy (see ‘Italy: Remarks made in Several Visits from the Year 1816 to 1834’, London, 1859, 2 vols., 8vo). There, on September 20, at Pisa, he for the last time saw Byron, whose parting words were, “Hobhouse, you should never have come, or you should never go.” In July, 1824, when Byron’s body was brought home, he boarded the ‘Florida’ in Sandgate Creek, and took charge of the funeral ceremonies from Westminster Stairs to the interment at Hucknall Torkard. He prepared an article for the ‘Quarterly Review’, exposing the absurdities of Medwin’s ‘Conversations’ and of Dallas’s ‘Recollections’; but, owing to difficulties with Southey, it was not published. It was the substance of this article which afterwards appeared in the ‘Westminster Review’ in 1825. In 1830 he wrote, but, by Lord Holland’s advice, withheld, a refutation of the charges made against the dead poet as to his separation from Lady Byron. He has, however, left on record that it was not fear which induced Byron to agree to the separation, but that, on the contrary, he was ready to “go into court.”
The staunchest of Byron’s friends, Hobhouse was also the most sensible and candid. As such Byron valued him. Talking to Lady Blessington at Genoa, in 1823, he said (‘Conversations’, p. 93) that Hobhouse was
“the most impartial, or perhaps,” added he, “‘unpartial’, of my friends; he always told me my faults, but I must do him the justice to add, that he told them to ‘me’, and not to others.”
On another occasion he said (p. 172),
“If friendship, as most people imagine, consists in telling one truth — unvarnished, unadorned truth — he is indeed a friend: yet, hang it, I must be candid, and say I have had many other, and more agreeable, proofs of Hobhouse’s friendship than the truths he always told me; but the fact is, I wanted him to sugar them over a little with flattery, as nurses do the physic given to children; and he never would, and therefore I have never felt quite content with him, though, ‘au fond’, I respect him the more for his candour, while I respect myself very much less for my weakness in disliking it.”]
[Footnote 2: Scrope Berdmore Davies (1783-1852), born at Horsley, in Gloucestershire, was educated at Eton, and King’s College, Cambridge, where he was admitted a Scholar in July, 1802, and a Fellow in July, 1805. In 1803 he was awarded by the Provost of Eton the Belham Scholarship, given to those Scholars of King’s who had behaved well at Eton, and held it till 1816. A witty companion, with “a dry caustic manner, and an irresistible stammer” (‘Life of Rev, F. Hodgson’, vol. i. p. 204), Davies was, during the Regency and afterwards, a popular member of fashionable society. A daring gambler and shrewd calculator, he at one time won heavily at the gaming-tables. On June 10, 1814, as he told Hobhouse, he won £6065 at Watier’s Club at Macao. Captain Cronow, in his ‘Reminiscences’ (ed. 1860, vol. i. pp. 93-96), sketches him among “Golden Ball” Hughes, “King” Allen, and other dandies. But luck turned against him, and he retired, poverty-stricken and almost dependent upon his Fellowship, to Paris, where he died, May 23, 1852. It was supposed he had for many years occupied himself with writing his recollections of his friends. But the notes, if they were ever written, have disappeared.
Byron, who hated obligations, as he himself says, counted Davies as a friend, though not on the same plane as Hobhouse. He borrowed from Davies £4800 before he left England in 1809, repaid him in 1814, and dedicated to him his ‘Parisina’. In his ‘MS. Journal’ (‘Life’, pp. 129, 130) he says,
”One of the cleverest men I ever knew, in conversation, was Scrope
Berdmore Davies. Hobhouse is also very good in that line, though it is
of less consequence to a man who has other ways of showing his talents
than in company. Scrope was always ready, and often witty — Hobhouse
was witty, but not always so ready, being more diffident.”
Byron appointed him one of the executors of his will of 1811. In his
‘Journal’ for March 28, 1814 (‘Life’, p. 234), occurs this entry:
“Yesterday, dined tête à tête at the Cocoa with Scrope Davies — sat from six till midnight — drank between us one bottle of champagne and six of claret, neither of which wines ever affect me. Offered to take Scrope home in my carriage; but he wa
s tipsy and pious, and I was obliged to leave him on his knees praying to I know not what purpose or pagod. No headach, nor sickness, that night, nor to-day. Got up, if anything, earlier than usual — sparred with Jackson ‘ad sudorem’, and have been much better in health than for many days. I have heard nothing more from Scrope.”
Scrope Davies visited Byron at the Villa Diodati, in 1816, and brought back with him ‘Childe Harold’, canto iii. On his return he gave evidence in the case of ‘Byron v. Johnson’, before the Lord Chancellor, November 28, 1816, when an injunction was obtained to restrain Johnson from publishing a volume containing ‘Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage to the Holy Land’, and other works, which he professed to have bought from Byron for £500.
According to Gronow (‘Reminiscences’, vol. i. p. 153, 154), Scrope Davies, asked to give his private opinion of Byron, said that he considered him
“very agreeable and clever, but vain, overbearing, suspicious, and jealous. Byron hated Palmerston, but liked Peel, and thought that the whole world ought to be constantly employed in admiring his poetry and himself.”]
[Footnote 3: For Hobhouse’s lines on Bowles, see ‘English Bards, etc.’, line 384, and note.]
87. — To Robert Charles Dallas.
Dorant’s Hotel, Albemarle Street, Jan. 20, 1808.
Sir, — Your letter was not received till this morning, I presume from being addressed to me in Notts., where I have not resided since last June; and as the date is the 6th, you will excuse the delay of my answer.
If the little volume you mention has given pleasure to the author of Percival and Aubrey, I am sufficiently repaid by his praise. Though our periodical censors have been uncommonly lenient, I confess a tribute from a man of acknowledged genius is still more flattering. But I am afraid I should forfeit all claim to candour, if I did not decline such praise as I do not deserve; and this is, I am sorry to say, the case in the present instance.