by Lord Byron
I wish you would write. I have heard from Hodgson frequently. Malta is my post-office. I mean to be with you by next Montem. You remember the last, — I hope for such another; but after having swam across the “broad Hellespont,” I disdain Datchett. Good afternoon!
I am yours, very sincerely,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: Henry Drury, afterwards Archdeacon of Wilts.]
[Footnote 2: Euripides, ‘Medea’, lines 1-7 —
[Greek (transliterated)]:
Eith ophel Argous mae diaptasthai skaphos Kolchon es aian kuaneas Symplaegadas, maed en napaisi Paeliou pedein pote tmaetheisa peukae, maed eretmosai cheras andron aristeon, oi to pagchryson deros Pelia metaelthon ou gar an despoin emae Maedeia pyrgous gaes epleus Iolkias k.t.l.]]
[Footnote 3: For Scrope Berdmore Davies, see page 165 [Letter 86],
[Foot]note 2.]
[Footnote 4: “The Cocoa Tree,” now 64, St. James’s Street, formerly in Pall Mall, was, in the reign of Queen Anne, the Tory Chocolate House. It became a club about 1745, and was then regarded as the headquarters of the Jacobites. Probably for this reason Gibbon, whose father professed Jacobite opinions, belonged to it on coming to live in London (see his journal for November, 1762, and his letter to his stepmother, January 18, 1766: “The Cocoa Tree serves now and then to take off an idle hour”). Byron was a member.]
[Footnote 5: Hodgson’s ‘Sir Edgar’ was published in 1810.]
[Footnote 6: Alluding to his having swum across the Thames with Henry
Drury, after the Montem, to see how many times they could make the
passage backwards and forwards without touching land. In this trial
Byron was the conqueror.]
141. — To his Mother.
Constantinople, June 28, 1810.
My dear Mother, — I regret to perceive by your last letter that several of mine have not arrived, particularly a very long one written in November last from Albania, where I was on a visit to the Pacha of that province. Fletcher has also written to his spouse perpetually.
Mr. Hobhouse, who will forward or deliver this, and is on his return to England, can inform you of our different movements, but I am very uncertain as to my own return. He will probably be down in Notts, some time or other; but Fletcher, whom I send back as an incumbrance (English servants are sad travellers), will supply his place in the interim, and describe our travels, which have been tolerably extensive.
I have written twice briefly from this capital, from Smyrna, from Athens and other parts of Greece; from Albania, the Pacha of which province desired his respects to my mother, and said he was sure I was a man of high birth because I had small ears, curling hair, and white hands!!! He was very kind to me, begged me to consider him as a father, and gave me a guard of forty soldiers through the forests of Acarnania. But of this and other circumstances I have written to you at large, and yet hope you will receive my letters.
I remember Mahmout Pacha, the grandson of Ali Pacha, at Yanina, (a little fellow of ten years of age, with large black eyes, which our ladies would purchase at any price, and those regular features which distinguish the Turks,) asked me how I came to travel so young, without anybody to take care of me. This question was put by the little man with all the gravity of threescore. I cannot now write copiously; I have only time to tell you that I have passed many a fatiguing, but never a tedious moment; and all that I am afraid of is that I shall contract a gypsy like wandering disposition, which will make home tiresome to me: this, I am told, is very common with men in the habit of peregrination, and, indeed, I feel it so. On the 3rd of May I swam from Sestos to Abydos. You know the story of Leander, but I had no Hero to receive me at landing.
I also passed a fortnight on the Troad. The tombs of Achilles and Æsyetes still exist in large barrows, similar to those you have doubtless seen in the North. The other day I was at Belgrade (a village in these environs), to see the house built on the same site as Lady Mary Wortley’s. By-the-by, her ladyship, as far as I can judge, has lied, but not half so much as any other woman would have done in the same situation.
I have been in all the principal mosques by the virtue of a firman: this is a favor rarely permitted to Infidels, but the ambassador’s departure obtained it for us. I have been up the Bosphorus into the Black Sea, round the walls of the city, and, indeed, I know more of it by sight than I do of London. I hope to amuse you some winter’s evening with the details, but at present you must excuse me; — I am not able to write long letters in June. I return to spend my summer in Greece. I write often, but you must not be alarmed when you do not receive my letters; consider we have no regular post farther than Malta, where I beg you will in future send your letters, and not to this city.
Fletcher is a poor creature, and requires comforts that I can dispense with. He is very sick of his travels, but you must not believe his account of the country. He sighs for ale, and idleness, and a wife, and the devil knows what besides. I have not been disappointed or disgusted. I have lived with the highest and the lowest. I have been for days in a Pacha’s palace, and have passed many a night in a cowhouse, and I find the people inoffensive and kind. I have also passed some time with the principal Greeks in the Morea and Livadia, and, though inferior to the Turks, they are better than the Spaniards, who, in their turn, excel the Portuguese. Of Constantinople you will find many descriptions in different travels; but Lady Mary Wortley errs strangely when she says, “St. Paul’s would cut a strange figure by St. Sophia’s.” I have been in both, surveyed them inside and out attentively. St. Sophia’s is undoubtedly the most interesting from its immense antiquity, and the circumstance of all the Greek emperors, from Justinian, having been crowned there, and several murdered at the altar, besides the Turkish Sultans who attend it regularly. But it is inferior in beauty and size to some of the mosques, particularly “Soleyman,” etc., and not to be mentioned in the same page with St. Paul’s (I speak like a Cockney). However, I prefer the Gothic cathedral of Seville to St. Paul’s, St. Sophia’s, and any religious building I have ever seen.
The walls of the Seraglio are like the walls of Newstead gardens, only higher, and much in the same order; but the ride by the walls of the city, on the land side, is beautiful. Imagine four miles of immense triple battlements, covered with ivy, surmounted with 218 towers, and, on the other side of the road, Turkish burying-grounds (the loveliest spots on earth), full of enormous cypresses. I have seen the ruins of Athens, of Ephesus, and Delphi. I have traversed great part of Turkey, and many other parts of Europe, and some of Asia; but I never beheld a work of nature or art which yielded an impression like the prospect on each side from the Seven Towers to the end of the Golden Horn.
Now for England. I am glad to hear of the progress of ‘English Bards’, etc. Of course, you observed I have made great additions to the new edition. Have you received my picture from Sanders, Vigo Lane, London? It was finished and paid for long before I left England: pray, send for it. You seem to be a mighty reader of magazines: where do you pick up all this intelligence, quotations, etc., etc.? Though I was happy to obtain my seat without the assistance of Lord Carlisle, I had no measures to keep with a man who declined interfering as my relation on that occasion, and I have done with him, though I regret distressing Mrs. Leigh, poor thing! — I hope she is happy.
It is my opinion that Mr. B — — ought to marry Miss R — — . Our first duty is not to do evil; but, alas! that is impossible: our next is to repair it, if in our power. The girl is his equal: if she were his inferior, a sum of money and provision for the child would be some, though a poor, compensation: as it is, he should marry her. I will have no gay deceivers on my estate, and I shall not allow my tenants a privilege I do not permit myself — that of debauching each other’s daughters. God knows, I have been guilty of many excesses; but, as I have laid down a resolution to reform, and lately kept it, I expect this Lothario to follow the example, and begin by restoring this girl to society, or, by the beard of my
father! he shall hear of it. Pray take some notice of Robert, who will miss his master; poor boy, he was very unwilling to return. I trust you are well and happy. It will be a pleasure to hear from you.
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
BYRON.
P.S. — How is Joe Murray?
P.S. — I open my letter again to tell you that Fletcher having petitioned to accompany me into the Morea, I have taken him with me, contrary to the intention expressed in my letter.
[Footnote 1: Alluding to his having swum across the Thames with Henry
Drury, after the Montem, to see how many times they could make the
passage backwards and forwards without touching land. In this trial
Byron was the conqueror.]
[Footnote 2: Lady Mary describes the village of Belgrade in a letter to Pope, dated June 17, 1717 (‘Letters’, edit. 1893, vol. i. pp. 331-333). But Walsh (‘Narrative of a Residence in Constantinople’, vol. ii. 108, 109), who visited Belgrade in 1821, says that no trace of her description was then to be seen — no view of the Black Sea, no houses of the wealthy Christians, no fountains, and no fruit-trees. “The very tradition” of the house, which had disappeared before Dallaway visited Belgrade in 1794, had perished.]
[Footnote 3: Lady Mary does not compare St. Paul’s with St. Sophia’s, but with the mosque of the Valide,
“the largest of all, built entirely of marble, the most prodigious, and, I think, the most beautiful structure I ever saw, be it spoken to the honour of our sex, for it was founded by the mother of Mahomet IV. Between friends, “St. Paul’s Church would make a pitiful figure near it”
(‘Letters’, vol. i. p. 356).
[Footnote 4:
”The European with the Asian shore
Sprinkled with palaces; the ocean stream
Here and there studded with a seventy-four;
Sophia’s cupola with golden gleam;
The cypress groves; Olympus high and hoar;
The twelve isles, and the more than I could dream,
Far less describe, present the very view
Which charm’d the charming Mary Montagu.”
Don Juan, Canto V. stanza 3.]
[Footnote 5: For Mrs. Leigh, ‘née’ Augusta Byron, see page 18 [Letter 7], [Foot]note 1.]
142. — To his Mother.
Constantinople, July 1, 1810.
My dear Mother, — I have no wish to forget those who have any claim upon me, and shall be glad of the good wishes of R — — when he can express them in person, which it seems will be at some very indefinite date. I shall perhaps essay a speech or two in the House when I return, but I am not ambitious of a parliamentary career, which is of all things the most degrading and unthankful. If I could by my own efforts inculcate the truth, that a man is not intended for a despot or a machine, but as an individual of a community, and fit for the society of kings, so long as he does not trespass on the laws or rebel against just governments, I might attempt to found a new Utopia; but as matters are at present, in course you will not expect me to sacrifice my health or self to your or anyone’s ambition.
To quit this new idea for something you will understand better, how are Miss R’s, the W’s, and Mr. R’s blue bastards? for I suppose he will not deny their authorship, which was, to say the least, imprudent and immoral. Poor Miss — — : if he does not marry, and marry her speedily, he shall be no tenant of mine from the day that I set foot on English shores.
I am glad you have received my portrait from Sanders. It does not flatter me, I think, but the subject is a bad one, and I must even do as Fletcher does over his Greek wines — make a face and hope for better. What you told me of — — is not true, which I regret for your sake and your gossip-seeking neighbours, whom present with my good wishes, and believe me,
Yours, etc.,
BYRON.
143. — To Francis Hodgson.
Constantinople, July 4, 1810.
My Dear Hodgson, — Twice have I written — once in answer to your last, and a former letter when I arrived here in May. That I may have nothing to reproach myself with, I will write once more — a very superfluous task, seeing that Hobhouse is bound for your parts full of talk and wonderment. My first letter went by an ambassadorial express; my second by the Black John lugger; my third will be conveyed by Cam, the miscellanist.
I shall begin by telling you, having only told it you twice before, that I swam from Sestos to Abydos. I do this that you may be impressed with proper respect for me, the performer; for I plume myself on this achievement more than I could possibly do on any kind of glory, political, poetical, or rhetorical. Having told you this, I will tell you nothing more, because it would be cruel to curtail Cam’s narrative, which, by-the-by, you must not believe till confirmed by me, the eye-witness. I promise myself much pleasure from contradicting the greatest part of it. He has been plaguily pleased by the intelligence contained in your last to me respecting the reviews of his hymns. I refreshed him with that paragraph immediately, together with the tidings of my own third edition, which added to his recreation. But then he has had a letter from a Lincoln’s Inn Bencher, full of praise of his harpings, and vituperation of the other contributions to his Missellingany, which that sagacious person is pleased to say must have been put in as FOILS (horresco referens!); furthermore he adds that Cam “is a genuine pupil of Dryden,” concluding with a comparison rather to the disadvantage of Pope.
I have written to Drury by Hobhouse; a letter is also from me on its way to England intended for that matrimonial man. Before it is very long, I hope we shall again be together; the moment I set out for England you shall have intelligence, that we may meet as soon as possible. Next week the frigate sails with Adair; I am for Greece, Hobhouse for England. A year together on the 2nd July since we sailed from Falmouth. I have known a hundred instances of men setting out in couples, but not one of a similar return. Aberdeen’s party split; several voyagers at present have done the same. I am confident that twelve months of any given individual is perfect ipecacuanha.
The Russians and Turks are at it, and the Sultan in person is soon to head the army. The Captain Pasha cuts off heads every day, and a Frenchman’s ears; the last is a serious affair. By-the-by I like the Pashas in general. Ali Pasha called me his son, desired his compliments to my mother, and said he was sure I was a man of birth, because I had “small ears and curling hair.” He is Pasha of Albania six hundred miles off, where I was in October — a fine portly person. His grandson Mahmout, a little fellow ten years old, with large black eyes as big as pigeon’s eggs, and all the gravity of sixty, asked me what I did travelling so young without a Lala (tutor)?
Good night, dear H. I have crammed my paper, and crave your indulgence. Write to me at Malta. I am, with all sincerity,
Yours affectionately,
BYRON.
[Footnote 1: George Hamilton Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen (1784-1860), afterwards Prime Minister (1852-55), succeeded his grandfather as fourth earl in 1801. Grandson of the purchaser of Mrs. Byron’s old home of Gight, and writer of an article in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ (July, 1805) on Gell’s ‘Topography of Troy,’ he has a place in ‘English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers’ (lines 508, 509). He also appears as “sullen Aberdeen,” in a suppressed stanza of ‘Childe Harold’, Canto II., which in the MS. follows stanza xiii., among those who
“ — — pilfer all the Pilgrim loves to see, All that yet consecrates the fading scene.”
After leaving Harrow, and before entering St. John’s College, Cambridge, he spent two years (1801-3) in Greece. On his return he founded the Athenian Society, and became President of the Society of Antiquaries from 1812 to 1846. It may be added that he was Foreign Secretary when the Porte acknowledged the independence of Greece by the Treaty of Adrianople (1829).]
[Footnote 2: In this war, the scene of which lay chiefly in Wallachia, Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Servia, the main episodes were the two battles of Rustchuk (July 4 and Octo
ber 14, 1811), the recapture of Silistria by the Russians, and the Convention of Giurgevo between the contending forces (October 28, 1811).]g
144. — To his Mother.
Athens, July 25, 1810.
Dear Mother, — I have arrived here in four days from Constantinople, which is considered as singularly quick, particularly for the season of the year. I left Constantinople with Adair, at whose adieux of leave I saw Sultan Mahmout, and obtained a firman to visit the mosques, of which I gave you a description in my last letter, now voyaging to England in the Salsette frigate, in which I visited the plains of Troy and Constantinople. Your northern gentry can have no conception of a Greek summer; which, however, is a perfect frost compared with Malta and Gibraltar, where I reposed myself in the shade last year, after a gentle gallop of four hundred miles, without intermission, through Portugal and Spain. You see, by my date, that I am at Athens again, a place which I think I prefer, upon the whole, to any I have seen.
My next movement is to-morrow into the Morea, where I shall probably remain a month or two, and then return to winter here, if I do not change my plans, which, however, are very variable, as you may suppose; but none of them verge to England.
The Marquis of Sligo, my old fellow-collegian, is here, and wishes to accompany me into the Morea. We shall go together for that purpose; but I am woefully sick of travelling companions, after a year’s experience of Mr. Hobhouse, who is on his way to Great Britain. Lord S. will afterwards pursue his way to the capital; and Lord B., having seen all the wonders in that quarter, will let you know what he does next, of which at present he is not quite certain. Malta is my perpetual post-office, from which my letters are forwarded to all parts of the habitable globe: — by the bye, I have now been in Asia, Africa, and the east of Europe, and, indeed, made the most of my time, without hurrying over the most interesting scenes of the ancient world. Fletcher, after having been toasted and roasted, and baked, and grilled, and eaten by all sorts of creeping things, begins to philosophise, is grown a refined as well as a resigned character, and promises at his return to become an ornament to his own parish, and a very prominent person in the future family pedigree of the Fletchers, who I take to be Goths by their accomplishments, Greeks by their acuteness, and ancient Saxons by their appetite. He (Fletcher) begs leave to send half-a-dozen sighs to Sally his spouse, and wonders (though I do not) that his ill-written and worse spelt letters have never come to hand; as for that matter, there is no great loss in either of our letters, saving and except that I wish you to know we are well, and warm enough at this present writing, God knows. You must not expect long letters at present, for they are written with the sweat of my brow, I assure you. It is rather singular that Mr. Hanson has not written a syllable since my departure. Your letters I have mostly received as well as others; from which I conjecture that the man of law is either angry or busy.