by Lord Byron
must not be given up — no, rather
”Let mightiest of all the beasts of chace
That roam in woody Caledon”
come against me; my annotation must stand.
We shall never sell a thousand; then why print so many? Did you receive my yesterday’s note? I am troubling you, but I am apprehensive some of the lines are omitted by your young amanuensis, to whom, however, I am infinitely obliged.
Believe me, yours very truly,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: Dallas (February 6, 1809) objected to the rhyme in the couplet: —
”Translation’s servile work at length disown,
And quit Achaia’s Muse to court your own.”
(For the corrected couplet, see ‘English Bards, etc’., lines 889, 890.)]
[Footnote 2: See ‘English Bards, etc.’, line 1016, note 2.]
112. — To R. C. Dallas.
February 11, 1809.
I wish you to call, if possible, as I have some alterations to suggest as to the part about Brougham.
B.
[Footnote 1: See ‘ibid.’, line 524, note 2.]
113. — To R. C. Dallas.
February 12, 1809.
Excuse the trouble, but I have added two lines which are necessary to
complete the poetical character of Lord Carlisle.
……….in his age
His scenes alone had damn’d our singing stage;
But Managers for once cried, “hold, enough!”
Nor drugg’d their audience with the tragic stuff!
Yours, etc.,
B.
[Footnote 1: See ‘ibid.’, lines 733-736. Another letter, written
February 15, 1809, runs as follows: —
”I wish you much to call on me, about One, not later, if convenient,
as I have some thirty or forty lines for addition.
Believe me, etc.,
B.”]
114. — To R. C. Dallas.
February 16, 1809.
Ecce iterum Crispinus! — I send you some lines to be placed after “Gifford, Sotheby, M’Niel.” Pray call tomorrow any time before two, and
Believe me, etc.,
B.
P.S. — Print soon, or I shall overflow with more rhyme.
[Footnote 1: See ‘English Bards, etc.’, lines 819-830.]
115. — To R. C. Dallas.
February 19, 1809.
I enclose some lines to be inserted, the first six after “Lords too are bards,” etc., or rather immediately following the line:
“Ah! who would take their titles with their rhymes.”
The four next will wind up the panegyric on Lord Carlisle, and come after “tragic stuff.”
Yours truly.
In these our times with daily wonders big,
A letter’d Peer is like a letter’d Pig:
Both know their alphabet, but who from thence
Infers that Peers or Pigs have manly sense?
Still less that such should woo the graceful Nine?
Parnassus was not made for Lords and Swine.
Roscommon, Sheffield, etc., etc.
…
… tragic stuff.
Yet at their judgment let his Lordship laugh,
And case his volumes in congenial calf:
Yes, doff that covering where morocco shines,
”And hang a calf-skin on those recreant” lines.
[Footnote 1: See ‘ibid.’, lines 736-740.]
116. — To R. C. Dallas.
February 22, 1809.
A cut at the opera. — Ecce signum! from last night’s observation,
and inuendos against the Society for the Suppression of Vice.
The lines will come well in after the couplets concerning Naldi and
Catalani!
Yours truly,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: See ‘English Bards, etc.’, lines 618-631, note 1, for the “cut at the opera.” The piece which provoked the outburst was ‘I Villegiatori Rezzani’, at the King’s Theatre, February 21, 1809. Guiseppe Naldi (1770-1820) made his ‘début’ in London, at the King’s Theatre, in April, 1806. (For further details, see ‘English Bards, etc.’, line 613, note 2.) Angelica Catalani, born at Sinigaglia, in 1779, or, according to some authorities, 1785, came out at Venice, in an opera by Nasolini. She sang in many capitals of Europe, married at Lisbon a French officer named Vallabrègue, and came to London in October, 1806. The salary paid her was a cause of the O. P. riots at Covent Garden in 1809, when one of the cries was, “No foreigners! No Catalani!” A series of caricatures, one set by Isaac Cruikshank, and several medals, commemorate the riots. Madame Catalani died at Paris in 1849.]
[Footnote 2: See ‘English Bards, etc.’, lines 632-637.]
117. — To his Mother.
8, St. James’s Street, March 6, 1809.
Dear Mother, — My last letter was written under great depression of spirits from poor Falkland’s death, who has left without a shilling four children and his wife. I have been endeavouring to assist them, which, God knows, I cannot do as I could wish, for my own embarrassments and the many claims upon me from other quarters.
What you say is all very true: come what may, Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot, I have fixed my heart upon it, and no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance. I have that pride within me which will enable me to support difficulties. I can endure privations; but could I obtain in exchange for Newstead Abbey the first fortune in the country, I would reject the proposition. Set your mind at ease on that score; Mr. Hanson talks like a man of business on the subject, — I feel like a man of honour, and I will not sell Newstead.
I shall get my seat on the return of the affidavits from Carhais, in Cornwall, and will do something in the House soon: I must dash, or it is all over. My Satire must be kept secret for a month; after that you may say what you please on the subject. Lord Carlisle has used me infamously, and refused to state any particulars of my family to the Chancellor. I have lashed him in my rhymes, and perhaps his lordship may regret not being more conciliatory. They tell me it will have a sale; I hope so, for the bookseller has behaved well, as far as publishing well goes.
Believe me, etc.
P.S. — You shall have a mortgage on one of the farms.
[Footnote 1: Captain Charles John Cary, R.N., succeeded his brother Thomas in 1796 as ninth Lord Falkland. He married, in 1803, Miss Anton, the daughter of a West India merchant. He had been recently dismissed from his ship “on account of some irregularities arising from too free a circulation of the bottle.” But he had received a promise of being reinstated, and, in high spirits at the prospect, dined one evening in March, 1809, at Stevens’s Coffeehouse, in Bond Street. There he applied to Mr. Powell an offensive nickname. “He lost his life for a joke, and one too he did not make himself” (Medwin, ‘Conversations’, ed. 1825, p. 66). A challenge resulted. The parties met on Goldar’s Green, and Falkland, mortally wounded, died two days later in Powell’s house in Devonshire Place, on March 7, 1809. (‘Annual Register’, vol. li. pp. 449, 450.) For a more detailed account, see ‘Gentleman’s Magazine’ for March, 1809. Both accounts give March 7 as the date of Falkland’s death. A posthumous child was born to Lady Falkland. Byron stood godfather, and gave £500 at the christening.
[Footnote 2: Byron took his seat in the House of Lords, March 13, 1809. The delay was caused by the difficulty of proving the marriage of Admiral the Hon. John Byron with Miss Sophia Trevanion in the private chapel of Carhais. Probably Carlisle neither possessed nor withheld any information.]
[Footnote 3: Byron had borrowed £1000 for his return to Cambridge in 1807: £200 from Messrs. Wylde and Co., bankers, of Southwell; and the remainder from the Misses Parkyns, and his great-aunt, the Hon. Mrs. George Byron. For this debt his mother made herself liable. No mortgage was given (s
ee page 221 [Letter 121], [Foot]note 2 ).]
118. — To William Harness.
8, St. James’s Street, March 18, 1809.
There was no necessity for your excuses: if you have time and inclination to write, “for what we receive, the Lord make us thankful,” — if I do not hear from you, I console myself with the idea that you are much more agreeably employed.
I send down to you by this post a certain Satire lately published, and in return for the three and sixpence expenditure upon it, only beg that if you should guess the author, you will keep his name secret; at least for the present. London is full of the Duke’s business. The Commons have been at it these last three nights, and are not yet come to a decision. I do not know if the affair will be brought before our House, unless in the shape of an impeachment. If it makes its appearance in a debatable form, I believe I shall be tempted to say something on the subject. — I am glad to hear you like Cambridge: firstly, because, to know that you are happy is pleasant to one who wishes you all possible sublunary enjoyment; and, secondly, I admire the morality of the sentiment. Alma Mater was to me injusta noverca; and the old beldam only gave me my M.A. degree because she could not avoid it. — You know what a farce a noble Cantab. must perform.
I am going abroad, if possible, in the spring, and before I depart I am collecting the pictures of my most intimate school-fellows; I have already a few, and shall want yours, or my cabinet will be incomplete. I have employed one of the first miniature painters of the day to take them, of course, at my own expense, as I never allow my acquaintance to incur the least expenditure to gratify a whim of mine. To mention this may seem indelicate; but when I tell you a friend of ours first refused to sit, under the idea that he was to disburse on the occasion, you will see that it is necessary to state these preliminaries to prevent the recurrence of any similar mistake. I shall see you in time, and will carry you to the ‘limner’. It will be a tax on your patience for a week; but pray excuse it, as it is possible the resemblance may be the sole trace I shall be able to preserve of our past friendship and acquaintance. Just now it seems foolish enough; but in a few years, when some of us are dead, and others are separated by inevitable circumstances, it will be a kind of satisfaction to retain in these images of the living the idea of our former selves, and, to contemplate, in the resemblances of the dead, all that remains of judgment, feeling, and a host of passions. But all this will be dull enough for you, and so good night; and, to end my chapter, or rather my homily,
Believe me, my dear H., yours most affectionately,
[Footnote 1: This was the inquiry into the charges made by Colonel Gwyllym Wardle, M.P. for Okehampton (1807-12), against the Duke of York and his mistress, Mary Ann Clarke. The inquiry began January 27, 1809, and ended March 20, 1809, with the duke’s resignation, the Commons having previously (March 17) acquitted him of “personal connivance and corruption.”
The case has passed into literature. Wardle, the valorous Dowler, and Lowten, Mr. Perker’s clerk, had all figured in the trial before they played their parts in ‘Pickwick’. Wardle, who was a colonel of the Welsh Fusiliers (“Wynne’s Lambs”) had fought at Vinegar Hill. After losing his seat, he took a farm between Tunbridge Wells and Rochester, from which he fled to escape his creditors, and died at Florence, November 30, 1834, aged seventy-two.]
[Footnote 2: Byron took his M.A. degree, July 4, 1808. In another letter to Harness, dated February, 1809, he says,
“I do not know how you and Alma Mater agree. I was but an untoward child myself, and I believe the good lady and her brat were equally rejoiced when I was weaned, and if I obtained her benediction at parting, it was, at best, equivocal.”]
[Footnote 3: George Sanders (1774-1846) painted miniatures, made watercolour copies of continental master-pieces, and afterwards became a portrait-painter in oils. He painted several portraits of Byron, two of which have been often engraved.]
119. — To William Bankes.
Twelve o’clock, Friday night.
My Dear Bankes, — I have just received your note; believe me I regret most sincerely that I was not fortunate enough to see it before, as I need not repeat to you that your conversation for half an hour would have been much more agreeable to me than gambling or drinking, or any other fashionable mode of passing an evening abroad or at home. — I really am very sorry that I went out previous to the arrival of your despatch: in future pray let me hear from you before six, and whatever my engagements may be, I will always postpone them. — Believe me, with that deference which I have always from my childhood paid to your talents, and with somewhat a better opinion of your heart than I have hitherto entertained,
Yours ever, etc.
[Footnote 1:
“I learn with delight,” writes Hobhouse from Cambridge, May 12, 1808, “from Scrope Davies, that you have totally given up dice. To be sure you must give it up; for you to be seen every night in the very vilest company in town — could anything be more shocking, anything more unfit? I speak feelingly on this occasion, ‘non ignara mali miseris, &c’. I know of nothing that should bribe me to be present once more at such horrible scenes. Perhaps ‘tis as well that we are both acquainted with the extent of the evil, that we may be the more earnest in abstaining from it. You shall henceforth be ‘Diis animosus hostis’.”
Moore quotes (‘Life’, p. 86) the following extract from Byron’s
‘Journal’: —
“I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as many people, being always excited. Women, wine, fame, the table, — even ambition, sate now and then; but every turn of the card and cast of the dice keeps the gamester alive: besides, one can game ten times longer than one can do any thing else. I was very fond of it when young, that is to say, of hazard, for I hate all card games, — even faro. When macco (or whatever they spell it) was introduced, I gave up the whole thing, for I loved and missed the rattle and dash of the box and dice, and the glorious uncertainty, not only of good luck or bad luck, but of any luck at all, as one had sometimes to throw often to decide at all. I have thrown as many as fourteen mains running, and carried off all the cash upon the table occasionally; but I had no coolness, or judgment, or calculation. It was the delight of the thing that pleased me. Upon the whole, I left off in time, without being much a winner or loser. Since one-and-twenty years of age I played but little, and then never above a hundred, or two, or three.”]
120. — To R. C. Dallas.
April 25, 1809.
Dear Sir, — I am just arrived at Batt’s Hotel, Jermyn Street, St. James’s, from Newstead, and shall be very glad to see you when convenient or agreeable. Hobhouse is on his way up to town, full of printing resolution, and proof against criticism. — Believe me, with great sincerity,
Yours truly,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: See page 163 [Letter 86], [Foot]note 1. Hobhouse’s
miscellany was published in 1809, under the title of ‘Imitations and
Translations from the Antient and Modern Classics: Together with
Original Poems never before published’.]
121. — To John Hanson.
Batt’s Hotel, Jermyn Street, April 26th, 1809.
DEAR SIR, — I wish to know before I make my final effort elsewhere, if you can or cannot assist me in raising a sum of money on fair and equitable terms and immediately. I called twice this morning, and beg you will favour me with an answer when convenient. I hope all your family are well. I should like to see them together before my departure.
The Court of Chancery it seems will not pay the money, of which indeed I do not know the precise amount; the Duke of Portland will not pay his debt, and with the Rochdale property nothing is done. — My debts are daily increasing, and it is with difficulty I can command a shilling. As soon as possible I shall get quit of this country, but I wish to do justice to my creditors (though I do not like their importunity), and particularly to my securities, for their annuities must be paid off soon, or the interest
will swallow up everything. Come what may, in every shape and in any shape, I can meet ruin, but I will never sell Newstead; the Abbey and I shall stand or fall together, and, were my head as grey and defenceless as the Arch of the Priory, I would abide by this resolution. The whole of my wishes are summed up in this; procure me, either of my own or borrowed of others, three thousand pounds, and place two in Hammersley’s hands for letters of credit at Constantinople; if possible sell Rochdale in my absence, pay off these annuities and my debts, and with the little that remains do as you will, but allow me to depart from this cursed country, and I promise to turn Mussulman, rather than return to it. Believe me to be,
Yours truly, BYRON.
P.S. — Is my will finished? I should like to sign it while I have anything to leave.
[Footnote 1: Money was obtained, partly by means of a life insurance effected with the Provident Institution. The medical report, signed by Benjamin Hutchinson, F.R.C.S., London, states that Hutchinson had attended Byron for the last four or five years; that he was, when last seen by Hutchinson, in very good health; that he never was afflicted with any serious malady; that he was sober and temperate; that he “sometimes used much exercise, and at others was of a studious and sedentary turn;” and thus concludes: “I do believe that he possesses an unimpaired, healthy constitution, and I am not aware of any circumstance which may be considered as tending to shorten his life.”
Mrs. Byron (April 9, 1809) begs Hanson to see that Byron gave some security for the thousand pounds for which she was bound. She adds: “There is some Trades People at Nottingham that will be completely ruined if he does not pay them, which I would not have happen for the whole world.” No security seems to have been given, and the tradesmen remained unpaid. Mrs. Byron’s death was doubtless accelerated by anxiety from these causes.]
122.-To the Rev. R. Lowe.
8, St. James Street, May 15, 1809.
MY DEAR SIR, — I have just been informed that a report is circulating in Notts of an intention on my part to sell Newstead, which is rather unfortunate, as I have just tied the property up in such a manner as to prevent the practicability, even if my inclination led me to dispose of it. But as such a report may render my tenants uncomfortable, I will feel very much obliged if you will be good enough to contradict the rumour, should it come to your ears, on my authority. I rather conjecture it has arisen from the sale of some copyholds of mine in Norfolk. I sail for Gibraltar in June, and thence to Malta when, of course, you shall have the promised detail. I saw your friend Thornhill last night, who spoke of you as a friend ought to do. Excuse this trouble, and believe me to be, with great sincerity,