by Lord Byron
If you send to the Globe E’r, say that I want neither excuse nor contradiction, but merely a discontinuance of a most ill-grounded charge. I never was consistent in any thing but my politics; and as my redemption depends on that solitary virtue, it is murder to carry away my last anchor.
CHAPTER VIII — NOVEMBER 14, 1813-APRIL 19, 1814
JOURNAL
If this had been begun ten years ago, and faithfully kept!!! — heigho! there are too many things I wish never to have remembered, as it is. Well, — I have had my share of what are called the pleasures of this life, and have seen more of the European and Asiatic world than I have made a good use of. They say “Virtue is its own reward,” — it certainly should be paid well for its trouble. At five-and-twenty, when the better part of life is over, one should be something; — and what am I? nothing but five-and-twenty — and the odd months. What have I seen? the same man all over the world, — ay, and woman too. Give me a Mussulman who never asks questions, and a she of the same race who saves one the trouble of putting them. But for this same plague — yellow fever — and Newstead delay, I should have been by this time a second time close to the Euxine. If I can overcome the last, I don’t so much mind your pestilence; and, at any rate, the spring shall see me there, — provided I neither marry myself, nor unmarry any one else in the interval. I wish one was — I don’t know what I wish. It is odd I never set myself seriously to wishing without attaining it — and repenting. I begin to believe with the good old Magi, that one should only pray for the nation, and not for the individual; — but, on my principle, this would not be very patriotic.
No more reflections. — Let me see — last night I finished “Zuleika,” my second Turkish Tale. I believe the composition of it kept me alive — for it was written to drive my thoughts from the recollection of:
“Dear sacred name, rest ever unreveal’d.”
At least, even here, my hand would tremble to write it. This afternoon I have burnt the scenes of my commenced comedy. I have some idea of expectorating a romance, or rather a tale in prose; — but what romance could equal the events:
“quæque ipse…...vidi,
Et quorum pars magna fui.”
To-day Henry Byron called on me with my little cousin Eliza. She will grow up a beauty and a plague; but, in the mean time, it is the prettiest child! dark eyes and eyelashes, black and long as the wing of a raven. I think she is prettier even than my niece, Georgina, — yet I don’t like to think so neither: and though older, she is not so clever.
Dallas called before I was up, so we did not meet. Lewis, too, — who seems out of humour with every thing.
What can be the matter? he is not married — has he lost his own mistress, or any other person’s wife? Hodgson, too, came. He is going to be married, and he is the kind of man who will be the happier. He has talent, cheerfulness, every thing that can make him a pleasing companion; and his intended is handsome and young, and all that. But I never see any one much improved by matrimony. All my coupled contemporaries are bald and discontented. W[ordsworth] and S[outhey] have both lost their hair and good humour; and the last of the two had a good deal to lose. But it don’t much signify what falls off a man’s temples in that state.
Mem. I must get a toy to-morrow for Eliza, and send the device for the seals of myself and — — Mem. too, to call on the Stael and Lady Holland to-morrow, and on — — , who has advised me (without seeing it, by the by) not to publish “Zuleika;” I believe he is right, but experience might have taught him that not to print is physically impossible. No one has seen it but Hodgson and Mr. Gifford. I never in my life read a composition, save to Hodgson, as he pays me in kind. It is a horrible thing to do too frequently; — better print, and they who like may read, and if they don’t like, you have the satisfaction of knowing that they have, at least, purchased the right of saying so.
I have declined presenting the Debtors’ Petition, being sick of parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third — I don’t know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it con amore; — one must have some excuse to one’s self for laziness, or inability, or both, and this is mine. “Company, villanous company, hath been the spoil of me;” — and then, I “have drunk medicines,” not to make me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself.
Two nights ago I saw the tigers sup at Exeter ‘Change. Except Veli Pacha’s lion in the Morea, — who followed the Arab keeper like a dog, — the fondness of the hyæna for her keeper amused me most. Such a conversazione! — There was a “hippopotamus,” like Lord Liverpool in the face; and the “Ursine Sloth” had the very voice and manner of my valet — but the tiger talked too much. The elephant took and gave me my money again — took off my hat — opened a door — trunked a whip — and behaved so well, that I wish he was my butler. The handsomest animal on earth is one of the panthers; but the poor antelopes were dead. I should hate to see one here: — the sight of the camel made me pine again for Asia Minor. “Oh quando te aspiciam?”
“Dear fatal name! rest ever unrevealed,
Nor pass these lips in holy silence sealed.”
Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard, lines 9, 10.
“. ... quœque ipse miserrima vidi
Et quorum pars magna fui.”
The moral and outline of The Monk are taken, as Lewis says in a letter to his father (Life, etc., vol. i. pp. 154-158), and as was pointed out in the Monthly Review for August, 1797, from Addison’s “Santon Barsisa” in the Guardian (No. 148). The book was severely criticized on the score of immorality. Mathias (Pursuits of Literature, Dialogue iv.) attacks Lewis, whom he compares to John Cleland, whose Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure came under the notice of the law courts:
“Another Cleland see in Lewis rise.
Why sleep the ministers of truth and law?”
An injunction was, in fact, moved for against the book; but the proceedings dropped.
Lewis had a remarkable gift of catching the popular taste of the day, both in his tales of horror and mystery, and in his ballads. In the latter he was the precursor of Scott. Many of his songs were sung to music of his own composition. His Tales of Terror (1799) were dedicated to Lady Charlotte Campbell, afterwards Bury, with whom he was in love. To his Tales of Wonder (1801) Scott, Southey, and others contributed. His most successful plays were The Castle Spectre (Drury Lane, December 14, 1797), and Timour the Tartar (Covent Garden, April 29, 1811).
In 1812, by the death of his father, “the Monk” became a rich man, and the owner of plantations in the West Indies. He paid two visits to his property, in 1815-16 and 1817-18. On the voyage home from the last visit he died of yellow fever, and was buried at sea. His Journal of a West Indian Proprietor, published in 1834, is written in sterling English, with much quiet humour, and a graphic power of very high order.
Among his Detached Thoughts Byron has the following notes on Lewis:
“Sheridan was one day offered a bet by M. G. Lewis: ‘I will bet you, Mr. Sheridan, a very large sum — I will bet you what you owe me as Manager, for my Castle Spectre.’
‘I never make large bets,’ said Sheridan, ‘but I will lay you a very small one. I will bet you what it is worth!’“
“Lewis, though a kind man, hated Sheridan, and we had some words upon that score when in Switzerland, in 1816. Lewis afterwards sent me the following epigram upon Sheridan from Saint Maurice:
“‘For worst abuse of finest parts
Was Misophil begotten;
There might indeed be blacker hearts,
But none could be more rotten.’“
Lewis at Oatlands was observed one morning to have his eyes red, and his air sentimental; being asked why? he replied ‘that when people said anything kind to him, it affected him deeply, and just now the Duchess had said something so kind to him’ — here tears began to flow again. ‘Never mind, Lewis,’ said Col. Armstrong to him, ‘never mind —
don’t cry, she could not mean it.’
“Lewis was a good man — a clever man, but a bore — a damned bore, one may say. My only revenge or consolation used to be setting him by the ears with some vivacious person who hated bores especially — Me. de Staël or Hobhouse, for example. But I liked Lewis; he was a Jewel of a Man had he been better set, I don’t mean personally, but less tiresome, for he was tedious, as well as contradictory to everything and everybody. Being short-sighted, when we used to ride out together near the Brenta in the twilight in summer, he made me go before to pilot him. I am absent at times, especially towards evening, and the consequence of this pilotage was some narrow escapes to the Monk on horseback. Once I led him into a ditch, over which I had passed as usual, forgetting to warn my convoy; once I led him nearly into the river instead of on the moveable bridge which incommodes passengers; and twice did we both run against the diligence, which, being heavy and slow, did communicate less damage than it received in its leaders, who were terrasséd by the charge. Thrice did I lose him in the gray of the gloaming and was obliged to bring to, to his distant signals of distance and distress. All the time he went on talking without intermission, for he was a man of many words. Poor fellow, he died a martyr to his new riches — of a second visit to Jamaica.
‘I’d give the lands of Deloraine
Dark Musgrave were alive again!’
that is
‘I would give many a Sugar Cane
Monk Lewis were alive again!’
“Lewis said to me, ‘Why do you talk Venetian (such as I could talk, not very fine to be sure) to the Venetians, and not the usual Italian?’ I answered, partly from habit and partly to be understood, if possible. ‘It may be so,’ said Lewis, ‘but it sounds to me like talking with a brogue to an Irishman.’“
In a MS. note by Sir Walter Scott on these passages from Byron’s Detached Thoughts, he says,
“Mat had queerish eyes; they projected like those of some insect, and were flattish in their orbit. His person was extremely small and boyish; he was, indeed, the least man I ever saw to be strictly well and neatly made. I remember a picture of him by Saunders being handed round at Dalkeith House. The artist had ungenerously flung a dark folding mantle round the form, under which was half hid a dagger, or dark lanthorn, or some such cut-throat appurtenance. With all this the features were preserved and ennobled. It passed from hand to hand into that of Henry, Duke of Buccleuch, who, hearing the general voice affirm that it was very like, said aloud, ‘Like Mat Lewis? Why, that picture is like a man.’ He looked, and lo! Mat Lewis’s head was at his elbow. His boyishness went through life with him. He was a child, and a spoiled child, but a child of high imagination, so that he wasted himself in ghost stories and German nonsense. He had the finest ear for the rhythm of verse I ever heard — finer than Byron’s.
Lewis was fonder of great people than he ought to have been, either as a man of talent or a man of fortune. He had always dukes and duchesses in his mouth, and was particularly fond of any one who had a title. You would have sworn he had been a parvenu of yesterday, yet he had been all his life in good society.
He was one of the kindest and best creatures that ever lived. His father and mother lived separately. Mr. Lewis allowed his son a handsome income; but reduced it more than one half when he found that he gave his mother half of it. He restricted himself in all his expenses, and shared the diminished income with his mother as before. He did much good by stealth, and was a most generous creature.
I had a good picture drawn me, I think by Thos. Thomson, of Fox, in his latter days, suffering the fatigue of an attack from Lewis. The great statesman was become bulky and lethargic, and lay like a fat ox which for sometime endures the persecution of a buzzing fly, rather than rise to get rid of it; and then at last he got up, and heavily plodded his way to the other side of the room.”
Referring to Byron’s story of Lewis near the Brenta, Scott adds,
“I had a worse adventure with Mat Lewis. I had been his guide from the cottage I then had at Laswade to the Chapel of Roslin. We were to go up one side of the river and come down the other. In the return he was dead tired, and, like the Israelites, he murmured against his guide for leading him into the wilderness. I was then as strong as a poney, and took him on my back, dressed as he was in his shooting array of a close sky-blue jacket, and the brightest red pantaloons I ever saw on a human breech. He also had a kind of feather in his cap. At last I could not help laughing at the ridiculous figure we must both have made, at which my rider waxed wroth. It was an ill-chosen hour and place, for I could have served him as Wallace did Fawden — thrown him down and twisted his head off. We returned to the cottage weary wights, and it cost more than one glass of Noyau, which he liked in a decent way, to get Mat’s temper on its legs again.”
November 16th, 1813
Went last night with Lewis to see the first of Antony and Cleopatra. It was admirably got up, and well acted — a salad of Shakspeare and Dryden. Cleopatra strikes me as the epitome of her sex — fond, lively, sad, tender, teasing, humble, haughty, beautiful, the devil! — coquettish to the last, as well with the “asp” as with Antony. After doing all she can to persuade him that — but why do they abuse him for cutting off that poltroon Cicero’s head? Did not Tully tell Brutus it was a pity to have spared Antony? and did he not speak the Philippics? and are not “words things?” and such “words” very pestilent “things” too? If he had had a hundred heads, they deserved (from Antony) a rostrum (his was stuck up there) apiece — though, after all, he might as well have pardoned him, for the credit of the thing. But to resume — Cleopatra, after securing him, says, “yet go — it is your interest,” etc. — how like the sex! and the questions about Octavia — it is woman all over.
To-day received Lord Jersey’s invitation to Middleton — to travel sixty miles to meet Madame De Stael! I once travelled three thousand to get among silent people; and this same lady writes octavos, and talks folios. I have read her books — like most of them, and delight in the last; so I won’t hear it, as well as read.
Read Burns to-day. What would he have been, if a patrician? We should have had more polish — less force — just as much verse, but no immortality — a divorce and a duel or two, the which had he survived, as his potations must have been less spirituous, he might have lived as long as Sheridan, and outlived as much as poor Brinsley. What a wreck is that man! and all from bad pilotage; for no one had ever better gales, though now and then a little too squally. Poor dear Sherry! I shall never forget the day he and Rogers and Moore and I passed together; when he talked, and we listened, without one yawn, from six till one in the morning.
Got my seals — — . Have again forgot a play-thing for ma petite cousine Eliza; but I must send for it to-morrow. I hope Harry will bring her to me. I sent Lord Holland the proofs of the last “Giaour” and “The Bride of Abydos” He won’t like the latter, and I don’t think that I shall long. It was written in four nights to distract my dreams from — — . Were it not thus, it had never been composed; and had I not done something at that time, I must have gone mad, by eating my own heart, — bitter diet; — Hodgson likes it better than “The Giaour” but nobody else will, — and he never liked the Fragment. I am sure, had it not been for Murray, that would never have been published, though the circumstances which are the ground-work make it — — heigh-ho!
To-night I saw both the sisters of — — ; my God! the youngest so like! I thought I should have sprung across the house, and am so glad no one was with me in Lady H.’s box. I hate those likenesses — the mock-bird, but not the nightingale — so like as to remind, so different as to be painful.
One quarrels equally with the points of resemblance and of distinction.
“But words are things; and a small drop of ink,
Falling, like dew, upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.”
Don Juan, Canto III. stanza lxxxviii.
My hope on high — my all below;
Earth holds no other like to thee,
Or, if it doth, in vain for me:
For worlds I dare not view the dame
Resembling thee, yet not the same.”
The Giaour.
November 17th, 1813
No letter from — — ; but I must not complain. The respectable Job says, “Why should a living man complain?” I really don’t know, except it be that a dead man can’t; and he, the said patriarch, did complain, nevertheless, till his friends were tired and his wife recommended that pious prologue,”Curse — and die;” the only time, I suppose, when but little relief is to be found in swearing. I have had a most kind letter from Lord Holland on “The Bride of Abydos,” which he likes, and so does Lady H. This is very good-natured in both, from whom I don’t deserve any quarter. Yet I did think, at the time, that my cause of enmity proceeded from Holland House, and am glad I was wrong, and wish I had not been in such a hurry with that confounded satire, of which I would suppress even the memory; — but people, now they can’t get it, make a fuss, I verily believe, out of contradiction.
George Ellis and Murray have been talking something about Scott and me, George pro Scoto, — and very right too. If they want to depose him, I only wish they would not set me up as a competitor. Even if I had my choice, I would rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the kings he ever made! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the monarch-makers in poetry and prose. The British Critic, in their Rokeby Review, have presupposed a comparison which I am sure my friends never thought of, and W. Scott’s subjects are injudicious in descending to. I like the man — and admire his works to what Mr. Braham calls Entusymusy. All such stuff can only vex him, and do me no good. Many hate his politics — (I hate all politics); and, here, a man’s politics are like the Greek soul — an , besides God knows what other soul; but their estimate of the two generally go together.