by Lord Byron
The strain of his multifarious activities affected both his health and his mind, and he committed suicide July 6, 1815.
“By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn’d,
By strangers honour’d, and by strangers mourn’d.”
(Pope.)
“Stay, oh stay! nor thus forlorn,
Leave me unbless’d, unpitied, here to mourn.”
(Gray.)
“Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn
Thy banish’d peace, thy laurels torn.”
(Smollett.)
253 — to John Murray
Cheltenham, September 27, 1812.
Dear Sir, — I sent in no Address whatever to the Committee; but out of nearly one hundred (this is confidential), none have been deemed worth acceptance; and in consequence of their subsequent application to me, I have written a prologue, which has been received, and will be spoken. The MS. is now in the hands of Lord Holland.
I write this merely to say, that (however it is received by the audience) you will publish it in the next edition of Childe Harold; and I only beg you at present to keep my name secret till you hear further from me, and as soon as possible I wish you to have a correct copy, to do with as you think proper.
I am, yours very truly,
Byron.
P. S. — I should wish a few copies printed off before, that the Newspaper copies may be correct after the delivery.
254 — to Lord Holland
September 28, 1812.
Will this do better? The metaphor is more complete.
Till slowly ebb’d the {lava of the}/{spent volcanic} wave,
And blackening ashes mark’d the Muse’s grave.
If not, we will say “burning wave,” and instead of “burning clime,” in the line some couplets back, have “glowing.”
Is Whitbread determined to castrate all my cavalry lines? I don’t see why t’other house should be spared; besides it is the public, who ought to know better; and you recollect Johnson’s was against similar buffooneries of Rich’s — but, certes, I am not Johnson.
Instead of “effects,” say “labours” — ”degenerate” will do, will it? Mr. Betty is no longer a babe, therefore the line cannot be personal. Will this do?
Till ebb’d the lava of {the burning}/{that molten} wave
with “glowing dome,” in case you prefer “burning” added to this “wave” metaphorical. The word “fiery pillar” was suggested by the “pillar of fire” in the book of Exodus, which went before the Israelites through the Red Sea. I once thought of saying “like Israel’s pillar,” and making it a simile, but I did not know, — the great temptation was leaving the epithet “fiery” for the supplementary wave. I want to work up that passage, as it is the only new ground us prologuizers can go upon:
This is the place where, if a poet
Shined in description, he might show it.
If I part with the possibility of a future conflagration, we lessen the compliment to Shakspeare. However, we will e’en mend it thus:
Yes, it shall be — the magic of that name,
That scorns the scythe of Time, the torch of Flame,
On the same spot, etc., etc.
There — the deuce is in it, if that is not an improvement to Whitbread’s content. Recollect, it is the “name,” and not the “magic,” that has a noble contempt for those same weapons. If it were the “magic,” my metaphor would be somewhat of the maddest — so the “name” is the antecedent. But, my dear Lord, your patience is not quite so immortal — therefore, with many and sincere thanks, I am,
Yours ever most affectionately.
P.S. — I foresee there will be charges of partiality in the papers; but you know I sent in no Address; and glad both you and I must be that I did not, for, in that case, their plea had been plausible. I doubt the Pit will be testy; but conscious innocence (a novel and pleasing sensation) makes me bold.
“Nay, lower still, the Drama yet deplores
That late she deigned to crawl upon all-fours.
When Richard roars in Bosworth for a horse,
If you command, the steed must come in course.
If you decree, the Stage must condescend
To soothe the sickly taste we dare not mend.
Blame not our judgment should we acquiesce,
And gratify you more by showing less.
Oh, since your Fiat stamps the Drama’s laws,
Forbear to mock us with misplaced applause;
That public praise be ne’er again disgraced,
From {brutes to man recall}/{babes and brutes redeem} a nation’s taste;
Then pride shall doubly nerve the actor’s powers,
When Reason’s voice is echoed back by ours.”
The last couplet but one was altered in a subsequent copy, thus:
“The past reproach let present scenes refute,
Nor shift from man to babe, from babe to brute.”
On February 18, 1811, at Covent Garden, a troop of horses were introduced in Bluebeard. For the manager, Juvenal’s words, “Lucri bonus est odor ex re Qualibet” (Sat. xiv. 204) may have been true; but, as the dressing-room of the equine comedians was under the orchestra, the stench on the first night was to the audience intolerable. At the same theatre, April 29, 1811, the horses were again brought on the stage in Lewis’s Timour the Tartar. At the same theatre, on the following December 26, a live elephant appeared. The novelty had, however, been anticipated in the Dublin Theatre during the season of 1771-72 (Genest’s English Stage, vol. viii. p. 287). At the Haymarket, and Drury Lane, the introduction of live animals was ridiculed. The Quadrupeds of Quedlinburgh was given at the Haymarket, July 26, 1811, as a burlesque on Timour the Tartar and the horses. The Prologue, by Colman the Younger, attacks the passion for German plays and animal actors:
“Your taste, recover’d half from foreign quacks,
Takes airings, now, on English horses’ backs;
While every modern bard may raise his name,
If not on lasting praise, on stable fame.”
At the Lyceum, during the season 1811-12, Quadrupeds, or the Manager’s Last Kick, in which the tailors were mounted on asses and mules, was given by the Drury Lane Company with success. It was this introduction of animal performers which Byron wished to attack.
“Then crush’d by rules, and weaken’d as refined,
For years the power of Tragedy declined;
From bard to bard the frigid caution crept,
Till Declamation roared, whilst Passion slept.
Yet still did Virtue deign the stage to tread,
Philosophy remained though Nature fled.
But forced, at length, her ancient reign to quit,
She saw great Faustus lay the ghost of Wit;
Exulting Folly hailed the joyous Day,
And Pantomime and Song confirmed her sway.
But who the coming changes can presage,
And mark the future periods of the Stage?
Perhaps if skill could distant times explore,
New Behns, new Durfeys, yet remain in store;
Perhaps, where Lear has raved, and Hamlet died,
On flying cars new sorcerers may ride;
Perhaps (for who can guess th’ effects of chance?)
Here Hunt may box, or Mahomet may dance.”
John Rich (circ. 1682-1761) was the creator of pantomime in England, which he introduced at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in April, 1716, and in which, under the stage name of Lun, he played the part of Harlequin. At Lincoln’s Inn Fields, January 29, 1728, he produced The Beggar’s Opera, which, after being refused at Drury Lane, made “Gay rich, and Rich gay.” “Great Faustus” probably alludes to the war between the two theatres, and the rival productions of Harlequin Dr. Faustus at Drury Lane in 1723, and of The Necromancer, or the History of Dr. Faustus at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in December of the same year. On December 7, 1732, Rich opened the new theatre at Cov
ent Garden, of which he remained manager till his death in 1761.
“Till blackening ashes and lonely wall
Usurp’d the Muse’s realm, and mark’d her fall.”
255 — to Lord Holland
September 28.
I have altered the middle couplet, so as I hope partly to do away with W.’s objection. I do think, in the present state of the stage, it had been unpardonable to pass over the horses and Miss Mudie, etc. As Betty is no longer a boy, how can this be applied to him? He is now to be judged as a man. If he acts still like a boy, the public will but be more ashamed of their blunder. I have, you see, now taken it for granted that these things are reformed. I confess, I wish that part of the Address to stand; but if W. is inexorable, e’en let it go. I have also new-cast the lines, and softened the hint of future combustion, and sent them off this morning. Will you have the goodness to add, or insert, the approved alterations as they arrive? They “come like shadows, so depart,” occupy me, and, I fear, disturb you.
Do not let Mr. W. put his Address into Elliston’s hands till you have settled on these alterations. E. will think it too long: — much depends on the speaking. I fear it will not bear much curtailing, without chasms in the sense.
It is certainly too long in the reading; but if Elliston exerts himself, such a favourite with the public will not be thought tedious. I should think it so, if he were not to speak it.
Yours ever, etc.
P.S. — On looking again, I doubt my idea of having obviated W.’s objection. To the other House allusion is non sequitur — but I wish to plead for this part, because the thing really is not to be passed over. Many afterpieces of the Lyceum by the same company have already attacked this “Augean Stable” — and Johnson, in his prologue against “Lunn” (the harlequin manager, Rich), — “Hunt,” — ”Mahomet,” etc. is surely a fair precedent.
“Ladies and gentlemen, — I know nothing I have done to offend you, and has set (sic) those who are sent here to hiss me; I will be very much obliged to you to turn them out.”
This unfortunate speech made matters worse; the audience refused to hear her, and her part was finished by Miss Searle.
Miss Mudie was said to be only eight years old. But J. Kemble, being asked if she were really such a child, answered,
“Child! Why, sir, when I was a very young actor in the York Company, that little creature kept an inn at Tadcaster, and had a large family”
(Clark Russell’s Representative Actors, p. 363, note 2). The Morning Post (April 5, 1806) says that Miss Mudie afterwards joined a children’s troupe in Leicester Place, where,
“though deservedly discountenanced at a great theatre, she will, no doubt, prove an acquisition to the infant establishment”
(Ashton’s Dawn of the XIXth Century in England, pp. 333-336).
256 — to William Bankes
Cheltenham, September 28, 1812.
My Dear Bankes, — When you point out to one how people can be intimate at the distance of some seventy leagues, I will plead guilty to your charge, and accept your farewell, but not wittingly, till you give me some better reason than my silence, which merely proceeded from a notion founded on your own declaration of old, that you hated writing and receiving letters. Besides, how was I to find out a man of many residences? If I had addressed you now, it had been to your borough, where I must have conjectured you were amongst your constituents. So now, in despite of Mr. N. and Lady W., you shall be as “much better” as the Hexham post-office will allow me to make you. I do assure you I am much indebted to you for thinking of me at all, and can’t spare you even from amongst the superabundance of friends with whom you suppose me surrounded.
You heard that Newstead is sold — the sum £140,000; sixty to remain in mortgage on the estate for three years, paying interest, of course. Rochdale is also likely to do well — so my worldly matters are mending. I have been here some time drinking the waters, simply because there are waters to drink, and they are very medicinal, and sufficiently disgusting. In a few days I set out for Lord Jersey’s, but return here, where I am quite alone, go out very little, and enjoy in its fullest extent the dolce far niente. What you are about I cannot guess, even from your date; — not dauncing to the sound of the gitourney in the Halls of the Lowthers? one of whom is here, ill, poor thing, with a phthisic. I heard that you passed through here (at the sordid inn where I first alighted) the very day before I arrived in these parts. We had a very pleasant set here; at first the Jerseys, Melbournes, Cowpers, and Hollands, but all gone; and the only persons I know are the Rawdons and Oxfords, with some later acquaintances of less brilliant descent.
But I do not trouble them much; and as for your rooms and your assemblies “they are not dreamed of in our philosophy!!” — Did you read of a sad accident in the Wye t’other day? A dozen drowned; and Mr. Rossoe, a corpulent gentleman, preserved by a boat-hook or an eel-spear, begged, when he heard his wife was saved — no — lost — to be thrown in again!! — as if he could not have thrown himself in, had he wished it; but this passes for a trait of sensibility. What strange beings men are, in and out of the Wye!
I have to ask you a thousand pardons for not fulfilling some orders before I left town; but if you knew all the cursed entanglements I had to wade through, it would be unnecessary to beg your forgiveness. — When will Parliament (the new one) meet? — in sixty days, on account of Ireland, I presume: the Irish election will demand a longer period for completion than the constitutional allotment. Yours, of course, is safe, and all your side of the question. Salamanca is the ministerial watchword, and all will go well with you. I hope you will speak more frequently, I am sure at least you ought, and it will be expected. I see Portman means to stand again. Good night.
Ever yours most affectionately,
“In 1812 at Middelton (Lord Jersey’s), amongst a goodly company of Lords, Ladies, and wits, etc., there was poor old Vice Leach, the lawyer, attempting to play off the fine gentleman. His first exhibition, an attempt on horseback, I think, to escort the women — God knows where — in the month of November, ended in a fit of the Lumbago — as Lord Ogleby says, ‘a grievous enemy to Gallantry and address’ — and if he could have but heard Lady Jersey quizzing him (as I did) next day for the cause of his malady, I don’t think that he would have turned a ‘Squire of dames’ in a hurry again. He seemed to me the greatest fool (in that line) I ever saw. This was the last I saw of old Vice Leach, except in town, where he was creeping into assemblies, and trying to look young — and gentlemanly.
Erskine too! — Erskine was there — good but intolerable. He jested, he talked, he did everything admirably, but then he would be applauded for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own paragraphs, and tell his own story again and again; and then ‘the trial by Jury!!!’ — I almost wished it abolished, for I sate next him at dinner, and, as I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat them to me. Chester (the fox-hunter), surnamed ‘Cheek Chester,’ and I sweated the Claret, being the only two who did so. Cheek, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a ‘bonvivant’ in a scribbler, in making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in ‘by G-d, he drinks like a Man!’“
“On Tuesday,” he says, “I supped, after the opera, at Mrs. Meynel’s with a set of the most fashionable company, which, take notice, I very seldom do now, as I certainly am not of the age to mix often with young people. Lady Melbourne was standing before the fire, and adjusting her feathers in the glass. Says she, ‘Lord, they say the stocks will blow up! That will be very comical.’“
Greville (Memoirs, ed. 1888, vol. vi. p. 248) associates her name with that of Lord Egremont. Reynolds painted her with her eldest son in his well-known picture Maternal Affection. Her second son, William, afterwards Prime Minister, used to say,
“Ah! my mother was a most remarkable woman; not merely clever and engaging, but the most sagacious woman I ever knew”
(Memoirs o
f Viscount Melbourne, vol. i. p. 135). Lady Melbourne, whom Byron spoke of as
“the best, the kindest, and ablest female I have ever known, old or young,”
died in 1818, her husband in 1828. He thus described her to Lady Blessington (Conversations, p. 225):
“Lady M., who might have been my mother, excited an interest in my feelings that few young women have been able to awaken. She was a charming person — a sort of modern Aspasia, uniting the energy of a man’s mind with the delicacy and tenderness of a woman’s. She wrote and spoke admirably, because she felt admirably. Envy, malice, hatred, or uncharitableness, found no place in her feelings. She had all of philosophy, save its moroseness, and all of nature, save its defects and general faiblesse; or if some portion of faiblesse attached to her, it only served to render her more forbearing to the errors of others. I have often thought, that, with a little more youth, Lady M. might have turned my head, at all events she often turned my heart, by bringing me back to mild feelings, when the demon passion was strong within me. Her mind and heart were as fresh as if only sixteen summers had flown over her, instead of four times that number.”
“Even now the autumnal charms of Lady — — are remembered by me with more than admiration. She resembled a landscape by Claude Lorraine, with a setting sun, her beauties enhanced by the knowledge that they were shedding their last dying beams, which threw a radiance around. A woman… is only grateful for her first and last conquest. The first of poor dear Lady — — ’s was achieved before I entered on this world of care; but the last, I do flatter myself, was reserved for me, and a bonne bouche it was.”
The following passage certainly relates to Lady Oxford:
“There was a lady at that time,” said Byron (Medwin’s Conversations, pp. 93, 94), “double my own age, the mother of several children who were perfect angels, with whom I had formed a liaison that continued without interruption for eight months. The autumn of a beauty like her’s is preferable to the spring in others. She told me she was never in love till she was thirty; and I thought myself so with her when she was forty. I never felt a stronger passion; which she returned with equal ardour…. She had been sacrificed, almost before she was a woman, to one whose mind and body were equally contemptible in the scale of creation; and on whom she bestowed a numerous family, to which the law gave him the right to be called father. Strange as it may seem, she gained (as all women do) an influence over me so strong, that I had great difficulty in breaking with her, even when I knew she had been inconstant to me: and once was on the point of going abroad with her, and narrowly escaped this folly.”