Lord Byron - Delphi Poets Series

by Lord Byron

  “As for my attachment to literature, I sacrificed for the pleasure of pursuing it very fair chances of opulence and professional honours, at a time of life when I fully knew their value; and I am not ashamed to say, that in deriving advantages in compensation from the partial favour of the public, I have added some comforts and elegancies to a bare independence. I am sure your Lordship’s good sense will easily put this unimportant egotism to the right account, for — though I do not know the motive would make me enter into controversy with a fair or an unfair literary critic — I may be well excused for a wish to clear my personal character from any tinge of mercenary or sordid feeling in the eyes of a contemporary of genius. Your Lordship will likewise permit me to add that you would have escaped the trouble of this explanation, had I not understood that the satire alluded to had been suppressed, not to be reprinted. For in removing a prejudice on your Lordship’s own mind, I had no intention of making any appeal by or through you to the public, since my own habits of life have rendered my defence as to avarice or rapacity rather too easy.

  “Leaving this foolish matter where it lies, I have to request your Lordship’s acceptance of my best thanks for the flattering communication which you took the trouble to make Mr. Murray on my behalf, and which could not fail to give me the gratification which I am sure you intended. I dare say our worthy bibliopolist overcoloured his report of your Lordship’s conversation with the Prince Regent, but I owe my thanks to him nevertheless, for the excuse he has given me for intruding these pages on your Lordship. Wishing you health, spirit, and perseverance, to continue your pilgrimage through the interesting countries which you have still to pass with Childe Harold, I have the honour to be, my Lord,

  “Your Lordship’s obedient servant,

  “Walter Scott.

  “P.S. — Will your Lordship permit me a verbal criticism on Childe Harold, were it only to show I have read his Pilgrimage with attention? Nuestra Dama de la Pena means, I suspect, not our Lady of Crime or Punishment, but our Lady of the Cliff; the difference is, I believe, merely in the accentuation of peña.”

  To Scott Byron replied with the letter given in the text. Scott’s answer, which followed in due course, will be found in .

  The Prince Regent, it may be added, showed his appreciation of Scott’s poetry by offering him, on the death of Pye, the post of poet laureate. Scott refused, on the ground, apparently, that the office had been made ridiculous by the previous holder.

  “At the time when Scott and Byron were the two lions of London, Hookham Frere observed, ‘Great poets formerly (Homer and Milton) were blind; now they are lame’“

  (Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers, P. 194).

  “There, too, he saw (whate’er he may be now)

  A Prince, the prince of princes at the time,

  With fascination in his very bow,

  And full of promise, as the spring of prime.

  Though royalty was written on his brow,

  He had then the grace, too, rare in every clime,

  Of being, without alloy of fop or beau,

  A finish’d gentleman from top to toe.”

  Dallas found him, shortly after his introduction to the prince, “in a full-dress court suit of clothes, with his fine black hair in powder,” prepared to attend a levee. But the levee was put off, and the subsequent avowal of the authorship of the stanzas rendered it impossible for him to go (Recollections, p. 234).

  242 — to Lady Caroline Lamb

  [August, 1812?]

  My Dearest Caroline, — If tears which you saw and know I am not apt to shed, — if the agitation in which I parted from you, — agitation which you must have perceived through the whole of this most nervous affair, did not commence until the moment of leaving you approached, — if all I have said and done, and am still but too ready to say and do, have not sufficiently proved what my real feelings are, and must ever be towards you, my love, I have no other proof to offer. God knows, I wish you happy, and when I quit you, or rather you, from a sense of duty to your husband and mother, quit me, you shall acknowledge the truth of what I again promise and vow, that no other in word or deed, shall ever hold the place in my affections, which is, and shall be, most sacred to you, till I am nothing. I never knew till that moment the madness of my dearest and most beloved friend; I cannot express myself; this is no time for words, but I shall have a pride, a melancholy pleasure, in suffering what you yourself can scarcely conceive, for you do not know me. I am about to go out with a heavy heart, because my appearing this evening will stop any absurd story which the event of the day might give rise to. Do you think now I am cold and stern and artful? Will even others think so? Will your mother ever — that mother to whom we must indeed sacrifice much, more, much more on my part than she shall ever know or can imagine? “Promise not to love you!” ah, Caroline, it is past promising. But I shall attribute all concessions to the proper motive, and never cease to feel all that you have already witnessed, and more than can ever be known but to my own heart, — perhaps to yours. May God protect, forgive, and bless you. Ever, and even more than ever,

  Your most attached,

  Byron.

  P. S. — These taunts which have driven you to this, my dearest Caroline, were it not for your mother and the kindness of your connections, is there anything on earth or heaven that would have made me so happy as to have made you mine long ago? and not less now than then, but more than ever at this time. You know I would with pleasure give up all here and all beyond the grave for you, and in refraining from this, must my motives be misunderstood? I care not who knows this, what use is made of it, — it is to you and to you only that they are yourself (sic). I was and am yours freely and most entirely, to obey, to honour, love, — and fly with you when, where, and how you yourself might and may determine.

  “Your little friend, Caro William,” writes the Duchess of Devonshire, May 4, 1812, “as usual, is doing all sorts of imprudent things for him and with him.”

  Again she writes, six days later, of Byron:

  “The ladies, I hear, spoil him, and the gentlemen are jealous of him. He is going back to Naxos, and then the husbands may sleep in peace. I should not be surprised if Caro William were to go with him, she is so wild and imprudent”

  (The Two Duchesses, pp. 362, 364). But Lady Caroline’s extravagant adoration wearied Byron, who felt that it made him ridiculous; Lady Melbourne gave him sound advice about her daughter-in-law; and he was growing attached to Miss Milbanke, and, when rejected by her, at first to Lady Oxford, and later to Lady Frances Wedderburn Webster. When Lady Bessborough endeavoured to persuade her daughter to leave London for Ireland, Lady Caroline is said to have forced herself into Byron’s room, and implored him to fly with her. Byron refused, conducted her back to Melbourne House, wrote her the letter printed above, and, as she herself admits, kept the secret. In December, 1812, Lady Caroline burned Byron in effigy, with “his book, ring, and chain,” at Brocket Hall. The lines which she wrote for the ceremony are preserved in Mrs. Leigh’s handwriting, and given in .

  From Ireland Lady Caroline continued the siege, threatening to follow him into Herefordshire, demanding interviews, and writing about him to Lady Oxford. At length Byron sent her the letter, probably in November, 1812, which she professes to publish in Glenarvon (vol. iii. chap. ix.). The words are acknowledged by Byron to have formed part at least of the real document, which is here quoted as printed in the novel:

  “Mortanville Priory, November the 9th.

  “Lady Avondale, — I am no longer your lover; and since you oblige me to confess it, by this truly unfeminine persecution, ... learn, that I am attached to another; whose name it would, of course, be dishonourable to mention. I shall ever remember with gratitude the many instances I have received of the predilection you have shown in my favour. I shall ever continue your friend, if your ladyship will permit me so to style myself; and, as a first proof of my regard, I offer you this advice, correct your vanity, which is rid
iculous; exert your absurd caprices upon others; and leave me in peace.

  “Your most obedient servant,

  “Glenarvon.”

  The first effect of this letter and her unrequited passion was, as she told Lady Morgan, to deprive her temporarily of reason, and it may be added that, when she was a child, her grandmother was so alarmed by her eccentricities as to consult a doctor on the state of her mind. The second effect was to render her temper so ungovernable that William Lamb decided on a separation. All preliminaries were arranged; the solicitor arrived with the documents; but the old charm reasserted itself, and she was found seated by her husband, “feeding him with tiny scraps of transparent bread and butter” (Torrens, Memoirs of Lord Melbourne, vol. i. p. 112). The separation did not take place till 1825.

  Throughout 1812-14 Lady Caroline continued to write to Byron, at first asking for interviews. Two of her last letters to him, written apparently on the eve of his leaving England, in 1816, are worth printing, though they increase the mystery of Glenarvon. (See Appendix III., and .)

  In Isaac Nathan’s Fugitive Pieces (1829), a section is devoted to “Poetical Effusions, Letters, Anecdotes, and Recollections of Lady Caroline Lamb.”

  Lady Caroline wrote three novels: Glenarvon (1816); Graham Hamilton (1822); and Ada Reis; a Tale (1823). Glenarvon, apart from its biographical interest, is unreadable.

  “I do not know,” writes C. Lemon to Lady H. Frampton (Journal of Mary Frampton, pp. 286, 287), “all the characters in Glenarvon, but I will tell you all I do know. I am not surprised at your being struck with a few detached passages; but before you have read one volume, I think you will doubt at which end of the book you began. There is no connection between any two ideas in the book, and it seems to me to have been written as the sages of Laputa composed their works. ‘Glenarvon’ is Lord Byron; ‘Lady Augusta,’ the late Duchess of Devonshire; ‘Lady Mandeville’ — I think it is Lady Mandeville, but the lady who dictated Glearvon’s farewell letter to Calantha — is Lady Oxford. This letter she really dictated to Lord Byron to send to Lady Caroline Lamb, and is now very much offended that she has treated the matter so lightly as to introduce it into her book. The best character in it is the ‘Princess of Madagascar’ (Lady Holland), with all her Reviewers about her. The young Duke of Devonshire is in the book, but I forget under what name. I need not say that the heroine is Lady Caroline’s own self.”

  In July, 1824, she was out riding, when she accidentally met Byron’s funeral on its way to Newstead. “I am sure,” she wrote to Murray, July 13, 1824, “I am very sorry I ever said one unkind word against him.” Her mind never recovered the shock, and she died in January, 1828, in the presence of her husband, at Melbourne House. (See also .)

  243 — to John Murray

  High Street, Cheltenham, Sept. 5, 1812.

  Dear Sir, — Pray have the goodness to send those despatches, and a No. of the E.R. with the rest. I hope you have written to Mr. Thompson, thanked him in my name for his present, and told him that I shall be truly happy to comply with his request. — How do you go on? and when is the graven image, “with bays and wicked rhyme upon’t,” to grace, or disgrace, some of our tardy editions?

  Send me “Rokeby” who the deuce is he? — no matter, he has good connections, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your inquiries: I am so so, but my thermometer is sadly below the poetical point. What will you give me or mine for a poem of six cantos, (when complete — no rhyme, no recompense,) as like the last two as I can make them? I have some ideas which one day may be embodied, and till winter I shall have much leisure.

  Believe me, yours very sincerely,

  Byron.

  P. S. — My last question is in the true style of Grub Street; but, like Jeremy Diddler, I only “ask for information.” — Send me Adair on Diet and Regimen, just republished by Ridgway.

  “To have kept his ground at the crisis when Rokeby appeared,” he writes, “its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength, and to have possessed all his original advantages, for a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage — a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in which the present writer had hitherto preceded better men than himself. The reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little velitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate, in the first two cantos of Childe Harold.”

  On this rivalry Byron wrote the passage in his Diary for November 17, 1813. A further cause for the cold reception of Rokeby was its inferiority both to the Lay and to Marmion. In Letter vii. of the Twopenny Post-bag, Moore writes thus of Rokeby

  “Should you feel any touch of poetical glow,

  We’ve a Scheme to suggest — Mr. Sc — tt, you must know,

  (Who, we’re sorry to say it, now works for the Row)

  Having quitted the Borders, to seek new renown,

  Is coming by long Quarto stages, to Town;

  And beginning with Rokeby (the job’s sure to pay)

  Means to do all the Gentlemen’s Seats on the way.

  Now the Scheme is (though none of our hackneys can beat him)

  To start a fresh Poet through Highgate to meet him;

  Who, by means of quick proofs — no revises — long coaches —

  May do a few Villas before Sc — tt approaches —

  Indeed, if our Pegasus be not curst shabby,

  He’ll reach, without found’ring, at least Woburn Abbey.”

  Diddler

  O Sam, you haven’t got such a thing as tenpence about you, have you?

  Sam

  Yes. And I mean to keep it about me, you see.

  Diddler

  Oh, aye, certainly. I only asked for information.

  244 — to Lord Holland

  Cheltenham, September 10, 1812.

  My Dear Lord, — The lines which I sketched off on your hint are still, or rather were, in an unfinished state, for I have just committed them to a flame more decisive than that of Drury.

  Under all circumstances, I should hardly wish a contest with Philodrama — Philo-Drury — Asbestos, H — — , and all the anonymes and synonymes of Committee candidates. Seriously, I think you have a chance of something much better; for prologuising is not my forte, and, at all events, either my pride or my modesty won’t let me incur the hazard of having my rhymes buried in next month’s Magazine, under “Essays on the Murder of Mr. Perceval.” and “Cures for the Bite of a Mad Dog,” as poor Goldsmith complained of the fate of far superior performances.

  I am still sufficiently interested to wish to know the successful candidate; and, amongst so many, I have no doubt some will be excellent, particularly in an age when writing verse is the easiest of all attainments.

  I cannot answer your intelligence with the “like comfort,” unless, as you are deeply theatrical, you may wish to hear of Mr. Betty, whose acting is, I fear, utterly inadequate to the London engagement into which the managers of Covent Garden have lately entered. His figure is fat, his features flat, his voice unmanageable, his action ungraceful, and, as Diggory says, “I defy him to extort that damned muffin face of his into madness.” I was very sorry to see him in the character of the “Elephant on the slack rope;” for, when I last saw him, I was in raptures with his performance. But then I was sixteen — an age to which all London condescended to subside. After all, much better judges have admired, and may again; but I venture to “prognosticate a prophecy” (see the Courier) that he will not succeed.

  So, poor dear Rogers has stuck fast on “the brow of the mighty Helvellyn” I hope not for ever. My best respects to Lady H.: — her departure, with that of my other friends, was a sad event for me, now reduced to a state of the most cynical solitude.

  “By the waters of Cheltenham I sat down and drank, when I remembered thee, oh Georgiana Cottage! As for our harps, we hanged them up upon the willows that grew thereby. Then they said, Sing us a song of Drury Lane,” etc.;
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  — but I am dumb and dreary as the Israelites. The waters have disordered me to my heart’s content — you were right, as you always are.

  Believe me, ever your obliged and affectionate servant,

  Byron.

  “Rebuilding of Drury-Lane Theatre.

  “The Committee are desirous of promoting a fair and free competition for an Address, to be spoken upon the opening of the Theatre, which will take place on the 10th of October next: They have therefore thought fit to announce to the Public, that they will be glad to receive any such Compositions, addressed to their Secretary at the Treasury Office in Drury Lane, on or before the 10th of September, sealed up, with a distinguishing word, number, or motto, on the cover, corresponding with the inscription, on a separate sealed paper, containing the name of the Author, which will not be opened, unless containing the name of the successful Candidate. Theatre Royal, Drury-Lane, August 13, 1812.

  Owing to an accidental delay in the publication of the above Advertisement, the Committee have thought proper to extend the time for receiving Addresses, from the last day of August to the 10th of September.”

  Byron, on the suggestion of Lord Holland, intended to send in an Address in competition with other similar productions. He afterwards changed his mind, and refused to compete. After all the Addresses had been received and rejected, the Committee applied to him to write an Address. This he consented to do.

  “The public were more importantly employed, than to observe the easy simplicity of my style, or the harmony of my periods. Sheet after sheet was thrown off to oblivion. My essays were buried among the essays upon liberty, Eastern tales, and cures for the bite of a mad dog.”

  Vicar of Wakefield, chap. xx.

  “I climb’d the dark brow of the mighty Helvellyn,” etc., etc.