My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 70

He was at this time contemplating a voyage:--

"Ward talks of going to Holland, and we have partly discussed an expedition together.... And why not?... is far away.... No one else, except Augusta (his sister), cares for me--no ties--no trammels--_andiamo dunque_--se torniamo bene--se no che importa?"[178]

He was evidently sad that day; but, is not the nature of his sadness revealed in those words:--"She is far away--?"

According to his memoranda, he again fell into this vein of sadness some months later, in February, 1814; but then, also, its causes are very evident. An acc.u.mulation of painful things, united to overwhelm him. He had sought to satisfy the longings of his heart by extraordinary intellectual activity, writing the "Bride of Abydos" in four nights, and the "Corsair" in a few days; he had also fought against them, by endeavoring to make a six months' journey into Holland; but this project failed, from obstacles created by a friend who was to accompany him; and, besides, the plague was then prevalent in the East; he was, moreover, embarra.s.sed with the difficulty of selling Newstead, and the necessity of such a painful measure; all which circ.u.mstances united to keep him in England. And a host of other irritating annoyances, the work of irreconcilable enemies, who were jealous of his success and his superiority, then fell upon him, as they could not fail to do; for his sun had risen too brightly not to call forth noxious vapors.

After having pa.s.sed a month away from London, he wrote in his memoranda:--

"I see all the papers are in a sad commotion with those eight lines....

You have no conception of the ludicrous solemnity with which these two stanzas have been treated, ... of the uproar the lines on the little 'Royalty's Weeping,' in 1812 (now republished) have occasioned. The 'Morning Post' gave notice of an intended motion in the House of my brethren on the subject, and G.o.d knows what proceedings besides.... This last piece of intelligence is, I presume, too laughable to be true, etc., etc."[179]

The first blow to his popularity was now given; and soon the whole nation rose up in arms against him. All jealousies, and all resentments now ranged themselves under one hostile banner, distorting Lord Byron's every word, calumniating his motives, making his most generous and n.o.ble actions serve as pretexts for attack; reproaching him with having given up enmities from base reasons (while he had done so in reality from feelings of justice and grat.i.tude), pretending[180] that he had pocketed large sums for his poems, and rendering him responsible for the follies women chose to commit about him. This war, breaking out against him like an unexpected hurricane amid radiant suns.h.i.+ne, must naturally have caused irritation. And if we add to it the embarra.s.sment of his affairs, the deplorable events in his opinion then going on in the world, the fall of the great Napoleon, whom he admired, the invasion of France by the Allied Powers, which he disapproved of, the policy pursued by his country, and the evils endured by humanity--spectacles that always made his heart bleed,--we may well understand how all these causes may have given rise to some moments of misanthropy, such as are betrayed by a few expressions in his journal; but it was a misanthropy that existed only in words, a plant without roots, of ephemeral growth, and most natural to a fine nature. We feel, notwithstanding all these real palpable causes of ennui, that his princ.i.p.al sufferings still came from the heart.

"Lady Melbourne," writes Lord Byron in his memoranda, in 1814, "tells me that it is said that I am 'much out of spirits.' I wonder if I am really or not? I have certainly enough of _'that perilous stuff which weighs upon the heart' and it is better they should believe it to be the result of these attacks than that they should guess the real cause_."

And this real cause was a grief he wished to keep secret. Separation from friends, their departure, even when he was to meet them again, likewise caused him sadness. Especially was this the case with regard to Moore, whom he loved so much, and whose society had an unspeakable charm for him:--"I can only repeat," he said, "that I wish you would either remain a long time with us, or not come at all, for these s.n.a.t.c.hes of society make the subsequent separations bitterer than ever."[181]

And in the next letter he says:--"I could be very sentimental now, but I won't. The truth is, that I have been all my life trying to harden my heart, and have not yet quite succeeded--though there are great hopes--and you do not know how it sunk with your departure."

This influence is ever visible. The English climate was always distasteful to him, and its fogs displeased him more since he had revelled in the splendor of Eastern suns; moreover, mists grew darker and colder when his imagination was still more influenced by his heart.

At those moments his first thought ever was--"_Let me depart, let me seek a bright sun, a blue sky._" When to his great regret, the East was closed against him by the plague of 1813, in his disdain for northern countries, he exclaimed:--

"Give me a _sun_, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not how cool, and my heaven is as easily made as your Persian's." Making allusions to this verse--

"_A Persian's heaven is_ easily made,-- _'Tis but black eyes and lemonade_."

But we know that he was thinking of this voyage, in order to divert his mind from the regret of having been obliged, from motives of honor and prudence, to give up accompanying into Sicily a family he liked very much. However, the sight of a camel sufficed to carry him back to Asia and the Euxine Sea, and to make him cry out: "_Quando te aspiciam!_"

It was also at this time that he wrote to Moore, "All convulsions with me end in rhyme." To overcome certain agitations of heart, he wrote the "Bride of Abydos," and directly afterward the "Corsair."

But if the melancholy, more or less deep, that cast its shadows over this brilliant period of his triumphs, wore specially the above character, it changed somewhat after his marriage. Thenceforward his melancholy sprang less from the heart, than from bitter disenchantment; from the suffering of a proud nature, cruelly wounded in its sentiment of justice by indignities, calumnies, persecutions, unexampled under such circ.u.mstances. Having already spoken of this marriage, I shall leave to regular biographers the detailed account of this painful period, so as only to consider it here under the sole aspect of the griefs it caused. I will not even stop to mention the unaccountable melancholy occasioned by a presentiment before marriage, nor the mysterious sort of agony that seized upon him just as he was about to kneel for the nuptial ceremony in church, nor even the sadness brought about by his first experience of the disposition of the person with whom he had so imprudently linked his fate. I will say, rather, that the melancholy caused and produced by this marriage was really grief; and of the kind that most harshly tries, not only firmness of soul, but likewise true virtue. For all the baseness, cowardice and spirit of revenge that had lain hidden a moment while his triumphal car pa.s.sed on, united at this moment to overwhelm and cast him down. And the means employed were, instinct with such perversity, that his great moral courage, always so powerful in helping him to bear contradictions, disappointments, and personal misfortunes, were no longer of any a.s.sistance, threatened as he was with the greatest calamity that can possibly befall a man of honor--namely, to be misjudged, calumniated, accused, thought capable of deeds quite contrary to his high nature.

Neither his courage, firmness, nor even the testimony of conscience could s.h.i.+eld him from great unhappiness. And he suffered all the more that the blame incurred proceeded from worthy persons who had been mischievously led into error; nor could he conceal from himself that he had voluntarily contributed to produce this unhappy state of things, by not sufficiently avoiding certain appearances, by not attaching sufficient importance to the opinion of his fellow-men, and having lent himself, too easily, to misinterpretation.

"The thorns which I have reaped," said he later (but he thought it much earlier), "are of the tree I planted,--they have torn me,--and I bled; I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."[182]

In addition to all this, Lord Byron had to experience the effects of a phenomenon of a terrible character, a phenomenon almost peculiar to England, the tyrannical power of its public opinion. This power, that gives form and movement to what is called the great world in England, weighed so heavily on the weak minds of several persons calling themselves friends, that, with few exceptions, and though all the while persuaded of the injustice of such opinion, after a few feeble efforts at changing it, and showing the wrong done to Lord Byron, they lost courage to declare their belief. Not only did they no longer protest, but they even pretended to believe part of the stupid calumnies spread abroad. To a heart firm and devoted as his, which, under similar circ.u.mstances, would have fought to the death in defense of outraged justice and a persecuted friend, this was one of the most cruel trials imposed on him by adverse destiny. What he must have suffered at this period has been already spoken of in another chapter. I will only say here, that, despite time, and the philosophy, which, subsequently, restored partial serenity, this wound never quite closed, since, even in the fourteenth canto of "Don Juan," written shortly before his last journey into Greece, he still made allusion to it, saying ironically:--

"Without a friend, what were humanity, To hunt our errors up with a good grace?

Consoling us with--'Would you had thought twice!

Ah! if you had but followed my advice!'

O Job! you had but two friends: one's quite enough, Especially when we are ill at ease."

Moore adds:--"Lord Byron could not have said, at this time, whether it was the attacks of his enemies, or the condolences of his friends that most lacerated his heart."

It was in this state of mind that he quitted England. He visited Belgium, and its battle-plains, still coming across fields of blood; went up the Rhine, and spent some months in Switzerland, where the glaciers, precipices, and the Alps, presented him with a splendid framework for new poems. All the melancholy to be found in "Childe Harold" (third canto), in "Manfred," and in his memoranda at that time, is evidently caused by grief, either of fresh occurrence or renewed by memory. A smile still sometimes wreathed his lip; but, when the gayety natural to his age and disposition would fain have taken possession of his heart, the remembrance of all the indignities he had undergone, rose up before him as the words _Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin_, did to _Belshazzar_. And often his fit of gayety ended in a sigh, which even became habitual after it had ceased to express sorrow. All those who knew Lord Byron have remarked _this singular and touching sigh_, attributing it to a melancholy temperament. But it was especially produced by a crowd of painful indistinct remembrances, intruding upon him at some moment when he would and could have been happy. So he has told us in those exquisite lines of his fourth canto of "Childe Harold;"

and he often repeated the same in prose. Thus, for instance, at the time of his excursions to Mont Blanc and the Glaciers, which, had his heart been lighter, would have made him so happy, he finished his memoranda with these melancholy words:--

"In the weather for this tour (of thirteen days) I have been very fortunate--fortunate in a companion (Hobhouse), fortunate in our prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays which often render journeys in a less wild country disappointing. I was disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of beauty. I can bear fatigue, and welcome privation, and have seen some of the n.o.blest views in the world. But, in all this, the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and, more, home desolation--which must accompany me through life--have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the cras.h.i.+ng of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched ident.i.ty in the majesty and the power and the glory around, above, and beneath me."

After having pa.s.sed eleven months in Switzerland, in about the same frame of mind, he crossed the Alps, and entered Italy. Who can breathe the soft air of that beautiful land, without feeling a healing balm descend on wounds within? The clear atmosphere, and the serene sky, were to him like the indulgent caresses of a sister, bringing a hope--a promise--that peace, and even happiness were about to visit his stricken soul. His first halt was at Milan. There he met with sympathetic, n.o.ble minds, instead of the envious, hypocritical, intolerant spirits that had caused him so much suffering; sweet and pleasant was it for him to live with such. Every evening he took his place in a box at the Scala, where the flower of the young intellects of Milan a.s.sembled, and where he met with other persons of note, such as Abbe de Breme and Silvio Pellico: gentle, beautiful souls, burning with love of country, and sighing after its independence. From them he learnt more than ever to detest the humiliating yoke of foreign despotism that weighed on Italy; with the independence and frankness of character that belonged to him, he did not scruple to deplore it openly; and his imprudent generosity became a source of annoyance, persecution and calumny for himself. There he heard that pa.s.sionate music which appeals so strongly to imagination and heart, because it harmonizes so naturally with all its surroundings in Italy. It was listening to this music, at times so pathetic and sweet, that emotion would often lend almost supernatural beauty to his countenance, so that even Mr. Stendhall, the least enthusiastic of men, was wont to say with enthusiasm, _that never, in his whole life, had he seen any thing so beautiful and expressive as Lord Byron's look, or so sublime as his style of beauty_. There he gave himself freely up to all the fine emotions that art can raise. Stendhall accompanied him to the Brera Museum, "_and I admired_," says he, "_the depth of sentiment with which Lord Byron understood painters of most opposite schools, Raphael, Guercino, Luini, t.i.tian. Guercino's picture of Hagar dismissed by Abraham quite electrified him, and, from that moment the admiration he inspired rendered every body mute around him_."

"He improvised for at least an hour, and even better than Madame de Stael," says Stendhall again. "One day Monti was invited to recite before Lord Byron one of his (Monti's) poems which had met in Italy with most favor,--the first canto of the 'Mascheroniana.'" The reading of these lines gave such intense pleasure to the author of "Childe Harold"

that Stendhall adds, he shall never forget the divine expression of his countenance on that occasion. "It was," says he, "the placid air of genius and power."

Thus taking interest and pleasure in all around him, if he did experience hours of melancholy (which is very probable, his wounds being so recent and so deep), he had, at the same time, strength to hide it from the public eye, and to express it only with his pen.

The single symptom that might be considered to betray, at this time, a continual malady of soul, was the indifference he showed toward the fair ladies of Milan, who, on their side, were full of enthusiasm about him, and with whom he refused to become acquainted, despite all their advances. But this reserve (though probably more marked and commented on at this particular moment of which we speak) belonged, nevertheless to his nature. After having visited Lake Garda with that pleasure he always experienced from the beauties of nature, and then the tomb of Juliet at Verona, with the interest excited by a true story even more than by Shakspeare's poetry (since he could only take real interest in what was true), he went from Milan to Venice. I have mentioned in another chapter the impression made on him by Venice in particular, and Italy in general; how, aided by exterior circ.u.mstances, by the sympathies growing up around him, the severe studies he underwent, so as to keep his heart calm, and bridle an imagination too liable to be influenced by bitter memories; in a few months he began a new existence there, with a more vigorous and healthy impulse for his genius.

When first victimized by the most senseless persecution, he was so surprised and confounded by the noise and violence of calumny, that his keen sentiment of injustice underwent a sort of numbness. On seeing himself thus brutally attacked on the one hand, and so feebly defended on the other, by lukewarm, pusillanimous friends, he may have questioned if he were not really in fault, and hesitated, perhaps, how to reply; for he almost spoke of himself as guilty in the farewell addressed to his cold-hearted wife, and also in the lines composed for his more deserving sister. This situation of mind shows itself without disguise, sadly depicted in the third canto of "Childe Harold." Manfred himself, that wondrous conception of genius, whose lot was cast amid all the sublimities of nature, despite his pride and his strength of will, yet was made to wear the sackcloth of penance. But, on arriving at Venice when months had rolled on, and the Alps were between him and the injustice undergone,--after Lady Byron's new, incredible, and strange refusal to return,--he felt his conscience disenc.u.mbered of all morbid influences. The testimony given, the absolution awarded by this impartial, incorruptible judge, whom he had never ceased to consult, became sufficient for him. And by degrees, as he succeeded in forgetting, so as to have power to forgive, peace and tranquillity revisited his mind. Venice was the city of his dream; he had known her, he said, ere he visited her, and after the East she it was that haunted his imagination. Reality spoiled nothing of his dream; he loved every thing about her,--the solemn gayety of her gondolas, the silence of her ca.n.a.ls, the late hours of her theatres and soirees, the movement and animation reigning on St. Mark's, where the gay world nightly a.s.sembled.

Even the decay of the town (which saddened him later), harmonizing then with the whole scene, was not displeasing. He regretted the old costumes given up; but the Carnival, though waning, still recalled ancient Venice, and rejoiced his heart. Familiar with the Italian language, he took pleasure in studying, also, the Venetian dialect, the navete and softness of which charmed him, especially on woman's lips. Stretched in his gondola, he loved to court the breezes of the Adriatic, especially at twilight and moonlit hours, unrivalled for their splendor in Venice.

In summer and autumn he delighted to give the rein to his horse along the solitary banks of the Lido, or beside the flower-enamelled borders of the Brenta. He loved the simplicity of the women, the freedom from hypocrisy of the men. Feeling himself liked by those among whom chance or choice had thrown him, frequenting theatres and society that could both amuse and instruct, though powerless to fill his thoughts, for these latter required more substantial food, and some hard difficult study to occupy them, being free from all disquieting pa.s.sions, and wis.h.i.+ng to remain thus, sociable as he was by temperament, though loving solitude for the sake of his genius; under all these circ.u.mstances, he could satisfy, in due proportion, the double exigency of his nature; for he lived, as we have seen, amid a small circle of sympathetic acquaintances, and of friends arriving from England, who cl.u.s.tered round him without interfering with the independence he had regained, and which formed the natural necessary element for his mind; though he had been deprived of it in England by the cant and pusillanimity of his friends.

If, then, he was not exactly happy at this time, at least he was on the road leading to happiness. For he was beginning to make progress in the path of philosophy,--a gentle, indulgent, generous philosophy, as deep as it was clever and pleasing, and which afterward ruled his life, and inspired his genius. All those who saw him at this period are unanimous in saying that melancholy then held aloof from him. In all his letters we find proof of the same. "Venice and I go on well together," wrote he to Murray.

And elsewhere,--"I go out a great deal, and am very well pleased."

Mr. Rose, who visited him at Venice, in the spring of 1818, began a poem which he addressed to him from Albano, where he was taking baths for his health, by alluding to the gayety which Byron spread around him at the reunions which he liked.

But while those living near him, and at Venice, where his poetry was not known, would never have imagined him to be melancholy, in England and other places where people read the sorrow-breathing creations of his genius, he continued to be considered the very personification of melancholy or misanthropy. He knew, and laughed about it sometimes.

"I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sable, in public imagination, more particularly since my moral wife demolished my reputation. However, not that, nor more than that, has yet extinguished my spirit, which always rises with the rebound."

And as he did not wish to be considered a misanthrope, he added to Moore, in the same letter:--

"I wish you would also tell Jeffrey what you know,--that I was not, and indeed, am not, even _now_, the misanthropical and gloomy gentleman for which he takes me, but a facetious companion, getting on well with those with whom I am intimate, and as loquacious and laughing as if I were a much cleverer fellow."

And at the same time, to disabuse the public also, and show that he could write gayly, he set himself to study a kind of poetry thoroughly Italian in its spirit, and of which Berni is the father; poetry replete with wit, and somewhat free, but devoid of malice, even when it merges from gayety into satire; a style unknown to England in its varied shades, and which it was easier for him to introduce than to make popular. "Beppo" was his first essay in this line, and it contains too much genuine fun not to have been a natural product of his humor ere flowing from his pen.

On sending it to Murray as a mere sample of the style he thought it possible to introduce into the literature of his country, he said:--

"At least, this poem will show that I can write gayly, and will repel the accusation of monotony and affectation."[183]

But the gayety visible at this period in his writings and his conduct was not, however, uninterrupted. For such cheerfulness to be constant, neither a continuation of the causes producing it, nor yet the absence of English papers and reviews could quite suffice. It was necessary that no letters should come, awakening painful remembrances that had slumbered awhile, that there should be no necessity for selling his property in England,--a matter always complicated, and difficult of execution at a distance, and which forced upon him cares and occupations most opposed to his character, while affording sad proof of the negligence, ingrat.i.tude, and other faults of those intrusted with the management of his affairs. It would have required that friends who had neglected to prevent his departure, should not, when weary of seeing him no more, have conspired to bring about his return, devising a good means of so doing by obstacles thrown in the way of a successful issue to his affairs, which happy conclusion was absolutely necessary for his peace and independence. We see by his letters, written during the summer of 1818, that he was tormented in a thousand ways; sometimes not receiving any accounts, sometimes being advised to come nearer London, then, again, having no tidings of how several thousands had been disposed of.

Besides that, he had constantly before his eyes a spectacle most painful for a generous heart to witness. That was Venice choked and expiring in the grip of her foreign rulers. The humiliation thus inflicted on the city of his dreams, and its n.o.ble race of inhabitants, and which was every instant repeated and proclaimed by the brutal voice of drums and cannons, with a thousand added vexations (necessary, perhaps, for keeping up an abhorred sway), caused infinite suffering to his just and liberal nature, raising emotions of anger and pitying regret, that flowed from his pen in sublimely indignant language. Thereupon, the despots, unable to impose silence upon him, revenged themselves in various ways, echoing reports spread in London, and inventing new fables, which the idle people of Venice, more idle than elsewhere, and even the gondoliers repeated in their turn to strangers, to amuse and gain a few pence. We pa.s.s over any details of the persecution inflicted on him by English tourists, who, not actuated by sympathy, but out of sheer curiosity and eagerness to pick up all the gossip and idle tales in circulation, were wont to run after Lord Byron, intruding on his private walks, and even pressing into his very palace. Such conduct, of course, displeased him, and accordingly in the summer of 1818 we find traces of ill-humor visible in his correspondence, and even in the first two cantos of "Don Juan." Afterward, when he had been laid hold of and absorbed by a great pa.s.sion, his irritation merged into sadness, melancholy, disquietude, and irresolution.[184]

But if all this proves that sadness wearing the garb of melancholy sometimes approached him, even at Venice; we see too clearly its real and accidental causes to be able to ascribe it to a permanent and fatal disposition of temperament.

Many signs of suffering escaped his pen at this time. For instance, writing to Moore from Venice in 1818, and wis.h.i.+ng to give him a picturesque description of a creature full of savage energy, who forced herself upon him in a thousand extravagant ways, refusing to leave his house, he said:--

"I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder at my speaking thus (making allusion to Lady Byron).... I could have forgiven the dagger or the bowl, any thing but the _deliberate desolation_ piled upon me when I stood _alone upon my hearth_ with my household G.o.ds s.h.i.+vered around me.... Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it?

It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I shall remain only a spectator upon this earth until some great occasion presents itself, which may come yet. There are others more to be blamed than----, and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly."

Meanwhile, until Providence should present him with this opportunity, another feeling took involuntary possession of his whole soul. But would not the sentiment which was about to swallow up or transform all others, and which was at last to bring him some happiness, also destroy the peace so carefully preserved in his heart by indifference since he left London? He seemed at first to have dreaded such a result himself; for, in one of the earliest letters addressed to the person beloved (letters which fully unveil his beautiful soul, and where one would vainly seek an indelicate or sensual expression), he tells her "that he had resolved, on system, to avoid a great pa.s.sion," but that she had put to flight all his resolutions, that he is wholly hers, and will become all she wishes, happy perhaps in her love, but never more at peace,--"_ma tranquillo mai piu_."

And he ends the letter with a verse quoted from Guarini's "Pastor Fido."[185]

His heart a.s.suredly was satisfied, but precisely because he truly loved, and felt himself beloved; therefore did he also suffer from the impossibility of reconciling the exigencies of his heart with circ.u.mstances. In one of these beautiful letters, so full of simplicity and refinement, he tells her:--