Byron's War

by Roderick Beaton

  By the time of the second battle, Torquil has been spirited away by Neuha. Christian gives no ground. Like every ‘byronic hero’ before him, he will die as he has lived. The surviving mutineers are down to just three. The narrator compares them to the 300 Greeks who stood against the Persian armies at Thermopylae, but then immediately corrects himself:

  But, ah! how different! ’tis the cause makes all,

  Degrades or hallows courage in its fall.

  O’er them no fame, eternal and intense,

  Blazed through the clouds of death and beckoned hence;

  No grateful country, smiling through her tears,

  Begun the praises of a thousand years;

  No nation's eyes would on their tomb be bent[.]39

  The last stand of the mutineers will not bear comparison to the 300 at Thermopylae. Theirs was a selfish act and will be remembered as such. No matter how heroically Christian fights and dies, he will never deserve ‘the praises of a thousand years’. The ‘cause’ (the italics are Byron's) determines everything. Christian fights for ‘no nation’ and therefore deserves no posthumous gratitude. The narrative voice is unforgiving: ‘Their life was shame, their epitaph was guilt.’40 If The Island is Byron's elegy for Shelley plus the best of himself (imagined as Torquil), it is also his damning epitaph on the worst of himself, imagined as Christian. At the moment of his death:

  The rest was nothing – save a life mis-spent,

  And soul – but who shall answer where it went?41

  Ill throughout that winter, thinking himself aged before his time, and still shaken by the premature death of Shelley, Byron was thinking about his own posthumous fame. He needed, now, as never before, what the doomed trajectories of so many ‘byronic’ heroes, and now of the Bounty mutineers, had never had: a cause. Not just any cause, but one that would earn the plaudits of a ‘grateful country’ and draw a ‘nation's eyes’.

  The call comes

  ‘Attended a committee summoned by Joseph Hume [M.P.] to examine into the chance of doing something for the Greeks.’42 So wrote Hobhouse, in his diary, on 1 March 1823. The meeting had been held the evening before, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand. In this seemingly rather breathless way, the London Greek Committee came into existence. Such groups had existed on the continent for some time, but organised support for Greece in England was something new. It began with a secretary and twenty-five members, most of them Members of Parliament belonging, like Hobhouse, to the Radical wing of the Whigs. Within a month, that number would have doubled. The final list runs to just over eighty.43 According to a declaration drafted that first evening, they were ‘friends of Greek Independence’, their purpose to advance ‘by all the means in their power the most important and most interesting cause’.44 As that wording suggests, the Committee had at this time only the vaguest notion of what it was about. Far more influential than the MPs in directing the activities of the group, were two individuals who had only very recently begun to take an interest in Greece.

  John Bowring, the Committee's secretary, was four years younger than Byron. Already he had made a name for himself all over Europe as a supporter of liberal causes. Ahead of him still lay a distinguished and varied career. During the past year, Bowring had corresponded occasionally with the Provisional Government in Greece, but until the end of 1822 his chief interests had lain in revolutionary Spain.45 It was on the initiative of the ubiquitously connected Metropolitan Ignatios in Pisa that Bowring had been approached, that autumn in Madrid, by a Greek businessman from Ioannina, of about his own age. This was Andreas Louriotis (Luriotti), who had been working in his uncle's business at Livorno at the time when the Shelleys had been living in Pisa, and had since followed Mavrokordatos to Greece. Louriotis was now on a mission from the Provisional Government to seek financial support from the liberal revolutionaries of Spain.46

  Bowring must have been impressed by his new Greek acquaintance. Before long he had introduced Louriotis to his friend Edward Blaquiere. Blaquiere, on his own admission, at this time knew nothing of Greece. A former lieutenant in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, he had just published a 600-page book glorifying the revolution in Spain.47 Towards the end of the year, with the Congress of Verona in session, and the outlook for the Spanish liberals darkening, the newly formed trio began to gravitate towards England. Louriotis was easily persuaded that London might present better prospects for raising support for his government than were on offer in Madrid. Bowring on his way home was arrested by the French police and found to be carrying confidential papers detailing plans by France to invade and restore the ousted Spanish monarchy. A minor diplomatic incident ensued and he was lucky to be quickly released.48 Blaquiere and Louriotis travelled together, avoiding anything so compromising en route, and reached London probably about the end of January.

  Blaquiere now set himself to assist his new Greek friend with all the zeal of the recent convert. It was almost certainly at Blaquiere's instigation that the veteran philosopher and constitutionalist Jeremy Bentham, who was susceptible to his flattery, was prevailed upon to comment in detail on the Provisional Constitution of free Greece, that had been drawn up the previous year. Bentham set to work on 9 February. When the newly formed London Greek Committee met for the first time on the twenty-eighth, at the Crown and Anchor, Bentham was one of the few attending who was not a Member of Parliament. Out of that meeting came the decision to send Blaquiere to Greece immediately. He would accompany Louriotis on his way home to report to his government.49

  Everything about Blaquiere's mission was (perhaps purposefully) obscure: its precise purpose, the capacity in which the emissary was supposed to act, and even the role of the Committee in sending him at all.50 How much this was due to muddle, and how much to well-maintained secrecy, is hard to tell. In general, the Committee's activities tended more towards the former. But it must have been by prior arrangement that Blaquiere's reports directed to Bowring's home in London were addressed to a ‘Mr Henry Murdoch’ – no doubt to avoid the watchful eyes of mail interceptors on the continent, to whom Bowring's name was known.51

  However it had been arranged, Blaquiere's responsibilities were numerous and overlapping. For Bentham, who covered his expenses, he was to deliver to the Provisional Government of Greece the great man's Observations on their constitution, together with instructions on their publication in Greek.52 He also carried letters from Bowring and Thomas Gordon (the only Committee member who had first-hand knowledge of the conflict).53 But Blaquiere was not only a confidential courier. His mission was at the same time a fact-finding one. Bowring even tried to persuade the British government to recruit his agent for its own purposes – presumably without success.54

  Finally, there was one more task for Blaquiere and Louriotis, as they prepared to leave London. A committee needs members. Names were discussed, at that first meeting. Hobhouse ventured to hope that his friend Lord Byron might lend his ‘kind and cordial support in this good cause’ and allow his name to be added to the list.55 This was as much as the Committee or any of its members would ever ask of Byron.

  So it was agreed. For the emissaries to call in at Genoa would not take them far out of their way. When Blaquiere and Louriotis set out from London, on 4 March, they were preceded by Hobhouse's warning to Byron to expect them.

  Byron received this warning on the nineteenth, and so was well prepared by the time Blaquiere and Louriotis turned up on 5 April. But what Hobhouse had told him was so brief as to be almost in code. It takes the form of a postscript written across the top of the first page of a letter, positioned so that it is the first thing anyone unfolding the paper will read: ‘Blaquier [sic] is going thro’ Genoa on a sort of mission to Greece – he will call on you.’ Nothing in the rest of the letter explains these words, or why Byron should have replied, equally tersely, by return: ‘I shall be glad to see Blaquiere.’56

  The explanation is that Hobhouse had already written, and this letter does not survive. Pietro Gamba would r
emember the earlier letter arriving, and roughly when (‘towards the end of February’).57 In fact, since Hobhouse had been expecting a reply before he wrote to Byron again on 2 March, and the normal time taken for letters to travel between Genoa and London was two weeks, the missing letter will have been written close to the beginning of February and received around or shortly after the middle of the month. All we can infer about its contents is that it will have mentioned Greece, explained who Blaquiere was, and said something about the latest developments in Spain, where Blaquiere had just come from. This would explain why Byron wrote to Kinnaird on 1 March: ‘If my health gets better and there is a war – it is not off the cards that I may go to Spain – in which case I must make all “sinews of War” (monies that is to say) go as far as they can – for if I do go – it will be to do what I can in the good cause.’58 Hobhouse's missing letter had set Byron thinking once more about going to fight in a war – but not necessarily in Greece.

  At the time this letter was written, the London Greek Committee had not yet come into existence. Blaquiere may have begun talking of going to Greece himself. But no one in London had any thought of Byron doing so. Before long, when he discovered the full extent of what his friend was planning, Hobhouse would be horrified, and would do his best to dissuade him.59 This first letter, though, whatever it contained, was enough to start Byron off along an entirely new train of thought. Its traces can be found in the new canto of Don Juan that he began on 23 February and in several letters written over the next few weeks. Canto XIV starts off with one of the longest and most personal digressions of the whole famously digressive poem. The ostensible theme is the meaning of life and the purpose of action. This leads into a vivid passage about the impulse towards self-destruction. The suicide, the narrator suggests, acts impetuously ‘Less from disgust of life than dread of death’. If ever you have been afraid, looking down from the top of a precipice, that you may suddenly have an uncontrollable urge to throw yourself over, the reason is:

  The lurking bias, be it truth or error,

  To the unknown; a secret prepossession,

  To plunge with all your fears . . .60

  Thoughts like these could have been prompted by the sudden prospect of taking part in violent action, whether in Spain or Greece.

  The long digression that follows becomes an anatomy of the melancholy that Byron had been experiencing during the winter at Genoa. His own word for it is ‘Ennui’. But now it has begun to affect him even as a poet:

  In youth I wrote, because my mind was full,

  And now because I feel it growing dull.61

  This is a new admission for Byron. He had often enough, before, been sceptical about the worth of poetry. Suddenly he had been forced to confront the worth of his own. During the weeks that followed the writing of these lines, beginning the very next day after he started the canto, he would elaborate upon these thoughts in a series of letters:

  Every publication of mine has latterly failed; I am not discouraged by this, because writing and composition are habits of my mind, with which Success and Publication are objects of remoter reference…I have had enough both of praise and abuse to deprive them of their novelty, but I continue to compose for the same reason that I ride, or read, or bathe, or travel – it is a habit.62

  Then at the end of March, just over a month after beginning his new canto, Byron's mood turned. Suddenly, he was sociable again. Within the space of a few days, no fewer than three separate sets of callers were received with courtesy, even with enthusiasm, at the Casa Saluzzo. No doubt, by this time, he was expecting one of them to be Blaquiere. Instead, April Fool's Day brought to Albaro the Irish peer Lord Blessington, travelling with his second wife who had been born a commoner, and the young French dandy who completed an ambiguous ménage à trois, Count D’Orsay.63 In his new mood of outgoing anticipation, Byron at once struck up a vivacious friendship with this trio that would last for the next two months.

  With Lord Blessington, Byron joked about everything, including his fast-forming plans for Greece. With Lady Blessington he flirted, and allowed himself to be drawn out in conversations that he probably knew she was writing down and would eventually publish. He was especially charmed by the French count, whose witty observations on English aristocratic manners he thought matched his own in the cantos he was just then writing of Don Juan. He probably competed, in a playful way, with Lord Blessington for the attention of the handsome and accomplished D’Orsay. The count returned the compliment by drawing a series of sketches in which Byron appears stooped, balding at the front, rather gaunt – in short very much as he describes himself in his letters of the winter (Plate 5b).64

  Plate 5b. Byron in Genoa, May 1823, at the time when he was making up his mind to take part in the Greek Revolution, sketch by Alfred d’Orsay (John Murray)

  This was the scene upon which Blaquiere and Louriotis entered on Saturday, 5 April, having reached Genoa the previous night. At ten in the morning Blaquiere despatched a note to the Casa Saluzzo, explaining that he was on his way to Greece: ‘I could not pass through Genoa without taking the liberty of communicating with your Lordship and offering you my best services in a country which your powerful pen has rendered doubly dear to the friends of freedom and humanity.’65 Blaquiere makes it look as if the visit is unpremeditated, and respectfully requests, along with his companion, ‘to be permitted to pay our respects in person’.

  Byron was ready for them. He had been waiting for this moment for the last three weeks. He agreed at once. His brief note, addressed to a complete stranger, is unexpectedly defensive. It is as though the writer feels the need to counter an imagined reproach:

  I cannot express to you how much I feel interested in the cause – and nothing but some Italian connections which I had formed in Italy – connections also in some degree referring to the political state of this country – prevented me from long ago – returning to do what little I could as an individual – in that land which is an honour even only to have visited.66

  What Byron said to his visitors that April afternoon, none of those who heard it recorded. According to his own report to Hobhouse: ‘Of course I entered very sincerely into the object of their journey – and have even offered to go up to the Levant in July – if the Greek Provisional Government think that I could be of any use.’67 But at once he had qualms. These he would not have spelt out to his visitors, but did to his old friend, the companion of his youthful travels. He was uncertain of his health, he explained to Hobhouse. His financial affairs in England were still unresolved. Then there was Teresa. She had appeared in this role in his letters before, whenever he had toyed with the idea of Greece. Teresa was still an obstacle to his going. The letter tails off in an excited ramble. Even if he were not actually to go in person, Blaquiere has suggested there is much that he might do, without leaving Genoa. He is anxious ‘in no way to interfere with Blaquiere’. Can Hobhouse help him think of supplies he could buy for the Greeks? He ends by placing himself at the disposal of the Committee, and then worries immediately because he has heard that ‘Strangers are not very welcome to the Greeks – from jealousy.’ There is something of the excited schoolboy about this letter. It is as though he cannot quite believe his own resolution.

  In a very specific way this is a new Byron. At the beginning of the letter, he subordinates his own intentions to what the Greek Government might find useful. At the end, he writes in very similar terms of the Committee. ‘Use’ and ‘useful’ will become very frequent terms, from this time on, in Byron's correspondence on the subject of Greece. This submission to a temporal authority higher than himself marks a complete break from the conduct of all the ‘byronic heroes’, from Childe Harold to Christian, to say nothing of his own up till now. From now on, the legitimacy of the cause he is engaged in will matter more and more to Byron.

  It was a perfect misunderstanding. The London Greek Committee was anxious to secure Byron's name for the cause. Most of its members knew nothing about the revolution t
hey had pledged to support. Information and advice from anyone who did, even if it was ten years out of date, would be most welcome. ‘I venture to hope that your Lordship will favor us with any suggestions which may advance our common objects. Your knowledge both of places and individuals would be very valuable if any part of it were transferred to us’, wrote Bowring to Byron on 14 March.68 That was all. But these letters were delayed in the post and would not reach Genoa until long after Blaquiere and Louriotis had departed. So they formed no part in shaping Byron's thinking.

  For Byron, providentially, the call had come. Now, when he most had need of one, he had a cause to live for – if need be, to die for. Within weeks, the cause of Greece would have become ‘the Cause’, with the capital letter.69 But the call to which Byron responded that spring had not come from London, from the newly formed Committee, or its emissaries.

  The formation of the London Greek Committee, the vague indications he had had from Hobhouse, and now the arrival of a deputation with an imagined invitation, all had a catalytic effect. Without them, the latent decision might never have been put into effect – just as the sufferer from vertigo is at no risk of jumping if there is no precipice in front of him. But none of these things was the reason for Byron's unexpected offer to go to Greece. This was a call to which he had first begun to respond, tentatively, in the autumn of 1821 after Shelley's visit to him in Ravenna. It was the ‘plan in embryo’ that he had confided to Medwin, Trelawny, and others, in the weeks after Shelley's cremation. Each time, until now, the determination to ‘take a part of some sort’ had been outweighed by ‘the tears of a woman…and the weakness of one's own heart’.70 Now, for the first time the balance had shifted.