The Life of Lord Byron Part 18

Night after night for years He hath pursued long vigils in this tower Without a witness.--I have been within it-- So have we all been ofttimes; but from it, Or its contents, it were impossible To draw conclusions absolute of aught His studies tend to.--To be sure there is One chamber where none enter--. . .

Count Manfred was, as now, within his tower: How occupied--we know not--but with him, The sole companion of his wanderings And watchings--her--whom of all earthly things That liv'd, the only thing he seem'd to love.

With admirable taste, and its thrilling augmentation of the horror, the poet leaves the deed which was done in that unapproachable chamber undivulged, while we are darkly taught, that within it lie the relics or the ashes of the "one without a tomb."

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

State of Byron in Switzerland--He goes to Venice--The fourth Canto of "Childe Harold"--Rumination on his own Condition--Beppo--Lament of Ta.s.so--Curious Example of Byron's metaphysical Love

The situation of Lord Byron in Switzerland was comfortless. He found that "the montain palaces of Nature" afforded no asylum to a haunted heart; he was ill at ease with himself, even dissatisfied that the world had not done him enough of wrong to justify his misanthropy.

Some expectation that his lady would repent of her part in the separation probably induced him to linger in the vicinity of Geneva, the thoroughfare of the travelling English, whom he affected to shun.

If it were so, he was disappointed, and, his hopes being frustrated, he broke up the establishment he had formed there and crossed the Alps. After visiting some of the celebrated scenes and places in the north of Italy he pa.s.sed on to Venice, where he domiciled himself for a time.

During his residence at Venice Lord Byron avoided as much as possible any intercourse with his countrymen. This was perhaps in some degree necessary, and it was natural in the state of his mind. He had become an object of great public interest by his talents; the stories connected with his domestic troubles had also increased his notoriety, and in such circ.u.mstances he could not but shrink from the inquisition of mere curiosity. But there was an insolence in the tone with which he declares his "utter abhorrence of any contact with the travelling English," that can neither be commended for its spirit, nor palliated by any treatment he had suffered. Like Coriola.n.u.s he may have banished his country, but he had not, like the Roman, received provocation: on the contrary, he had been the aggressor in the feuds with his literary adversaries; and there was a serious accusation against his morals, or at least his manners, in the circ.u.mstances under which Lady Byron withdrew from his house. It was, however, his misfortune throughout life to form a wrong estimate of himself in everything save in his poetical powers.

A life in Venice is more monotonous than in any other great city; but a man of genius carries with him everywhere a charm, which secures to him both variety and enjoyment. Lord Byron had scarcely taken up his abode in Venice, when he began the fourth canto of Childe Harold, which he published early in the following year, and dedicated to his indefatigable friend Mr Hobhouse by an epistle dated on the anniversary of his marriage, "the most unfortunate day," as he says, "of his past existence."

In this canto he has indulged his excursive moralizing beyond even the wide licence he took in the three preceding parts; but it bears the impression of more reading and observation. Though not superior in poetical energy, it is yet a higher work than any of them, and something of a more resolved and masculine spirit pervades the reflections, and endows, as it were, with thought and enthusiasm the aspect of the things described. Of the merits of the descriptions, as of real things, I am not qualified to judge: the transcripts from the tablets of the author's bosom he has himself a.s.sured us are faithful.

"With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the pilgrim than in any of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become weary of drawing a line, which every one seemed determined not to perceive: like the Chinese, in Goldsmith's Citizen of the World, whom n.o.body would believe to be a Chinese, it was in vain that I a.s.serted and imagined that I had drawn a distinction between the author and the pilgrim; and the very anxiety to preserve this difference, and the disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether--and have done so."

This confession, though it may not have been wanted, gives a pathetic emphasis to those pa.s.sages in which the poet speaks of his own feelings. That his mind was jarred, and out of joint, there is too much reason to believe; but he had in some measure overcome the misery that clung to him during the dismal time of his sojourn in Switzerland, and the following pa.s.sage, though breathing the sweet and melancholy spirit of dejection, possesses a more generous vein of nationality than is often met with in his works, even when the same proud sentiment might have been more fitly expressed:

I've taught me other tongues--and in strange eyes Have made me not a stranger; to the mind Which is itself, no changes bring surprise, Nor is it harsh to make or hard to find A country with--aye, or without mankind.

Yet was I born where men are proud to be, Not without cause; and should I leave behind Th' inviolate island of the sage and free, And seek me out a home by a remoter sea?

Perhaps I lov'd it well, and should I lay My ashes in a soil which is not mine, My spirit shall resume it--if we may, Unbodied, choose a sanctuary. I twine My hopes of being remember'd in my line, With my land's language; if too fond and far These aspirations in their hope incline-- If my fame should be as my fortunes are, Of hasty growth and blight, and dull oblivion bar

My name from out the temple where the dead Are honour'd by the nations--let it be, And light the laurels on a loftier head, And be the Spartan's epitaph on me: "Sparta had many a worthier son than he"; Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reap'd are of the tree I planted--they have torn me--and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

It will strike the reader as remarkable, that although the poet, in the course of this canto, takes occasion to allude to Dante and Ta.s.so, in whose destinies there was a shadowy likeness of his own, the rumination is mingled with less of himself than might have been expected, especially when it is considered how much it was a habit with him, to make his own feelings the basis and substratum of the sentiments he ascribed to others. It has also more than once surprised me that he has so seldom alluded to Alfieri, whom of all poets, both in character and conduct, he most resembled; with this difference, however, that Alfieri was possessed of affections equally intense and durable, whereas the caprice of Byron made him uncertain in his partialities, or what was the same in effect, made his friends set less value on them than perhaps they were ent.i.tled to.

Before Childe Harold was finished, an incident occurred which suggested to Byron a poem of a very different kind to any he had yet attempted:--without vouching for the exact truth of the anecdote, I have been told, that he one day received by the mail a copy of Whistlecraft's prospectus and specimen of an intended national work; and, moved by its playfulness, immediately after reading it, began Beppo, which he finished at a sitting. The facility with which he composed renders the story not improbable; but, singular as it may seem, the poem itself has the facetious flavour in it of his gaiety, stronger than even his grave works have of his frowardness, commonly believed to have been--I think, unjustly--the predominant mood of his character.

The Ode to Venice is also to be numbered among his compositions in that city; a spirited and indignant effusion, full of his peculiar lurid fire, and rich in a variety of impressive and original images.

But there is a still finer poem which belongs to this period of his history, though written, I believe, before he reached Venice--The Lament of Ta.s.so: and I am led to notice it the more particularly, as one of its n.o.blest pa.s.sages affords an ill.u.s.tration of the opinion which I have early maintained--that Lord Byron's extraordinary pretensions to the influence of love was but a metaphysical conception of the pa.s.sion.

It is no marvel--from my very birth My soul was drunk with love, which did pervade And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth; Of objects all inanimate I made Idols, and out of wild and lovely flowers, And rocks whereby they grew, a paradise, Where I did lay me down within the shade Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours.

It has been remarked by an anonymous author of Memoirs of Lord Byron, a work written with considerable talent and ac.u.men, that "this is so far from being in character, that it is the very reverse; for whether Ta.s.so was in his senses or not, if his love was sincere, he would have made the object of his affection the sole theme of his meditation, instead of generalising his pa.s.sion, and talking about the original sympathies of his nature." In truth, no poet has better described love than Byron has his own peculiar pa.s.sion.

His love was pa.s.sion's essence--as a tree On fire by lightning; with ethereal flame Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be Thus enamour'd were in him the same.

But his was not the love of living dame, Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, But of ideal beauty, which became In him existence, and o'erflowing teems Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.

In tracing the course of Lord Byron's career, I have not deemed it at all necessary to advert to the instances of his generosity, or to conduct less pleasant to record. Enough has appeared to show that he was neither deficient in warmth of heart nor in less amiable feelings; but, upon the whole, it is not probable that either in his charities or his pleasures he was greatly different from other young men, though he undoubtedly had a wayward delight in magnifying his excesses, not in what was to his credit, like most men, but in what was calculated to do him no honour. More notoriety has been given to an instance of lavish liberality at Venice, than the case deserved, though it was unquestionably prompted by a charitable impulse. The house of a shoemaker, near his Lords.h.i.+p's residence, in St Samuel, was burned to the ground, with all it contained, by which the proprietor was reduced to indigence. Byron not only caused a new but a superior house to be erected, and also presented the sufferer with a sum of money equal in value to the whole of his stock in trade and furniture. I should endanger my reputation for impartiality if I did not, as a fair set-off to this, also mention that it is said he bought for five hundred crowns a baker's wife. There might be charity in this, too.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

Removes to Ravenna--The Countess Guiccioli

Although Lord Byron resided between two and three years at Venice, he was never much attached to it. "To see a city die daily, as she does," said he, "is a sad contemplation. I sought to distract my mind from a sense of her desolation and my own solitude, by plunging into a vortex that was anything but pleasure. When one gets into a mill-stream, it is difficult to swim against it, and keep out of the wheels." He became tired and disgusted with the life he led at Venice, and was glad to turn his back on it. About the close of the year 1819 he accordingly removed to Ravenna; but before I proceed to speak of the works which he composed at Ravenna, it is necessary to explain some particulars respecting a personal affair, the influence of which on at least one of his productions is as striking as any of the many instances already described upon others. I allude to the intimacy which he formed with the young Countess Guiccioli.

This lady, at the age of sixteen, was married to the Count, one of the richest n.o.blemen in Romagna, but far advanced in life. "From the first," said Lord Byron, in his account of her, "they had separate apartments, and she always called him, Sir! What could be expected from such a preposterous connection. For some time she was an Angiolina and he a Marino Faliero, a good old man; but young Italian women are not satisfied with good old men, and the venerable Count did not object to her availing herself of the privileges of her country in selecting a cicisbeo; an Italian would have made it quite agreeable: indeed, for some time he winked at our intimacy, but at length made an exception against me, as a foreigner, a heretic, an Englishman, and, what was worse than all, a Liberal.

"He insisted--Teresa was as obstinate--her family took her part.

Catholics cannot get divorces; but to the scandal of all Romagna, the matter was at last referred to the Pope, who ordered her a separate maintenance on condition that she should reside under her father's roof. All this was not agreeable, and at length I was forced to smuggle her out of Ravenna, having discovered a plot laid with the sanction of the legate, for shutting her up in a convent for life."

The Countess Guiccioli was at this time about twenty, but she appeared younger; her complexion was fair, with large, dark, languis.h.i.+ng eyes; and her auburn hair fell in great profusion of natural ringlets over her shapely shoulders. Her features were not so regular as in their expression pleasing, and there was an amiable gentleness in her voice which was peculiarly interesting. Leigh Hunt's account of her is not essentially dissimilar from any other that I have either heard of or met with. He differs, however, in one respect, from every other, in saying that her hair was YELLOW; but considering the curiosity which this young lady has excited, perhaps it may be as well to transcribe his description at length, especially as he appears to have taken some pains on it, and more particularly as her destiny seems at present to promise that the interest for her is likely to be revived by another unhappy English connection.

"Her appearance," says Mr Hunt, "might have reminded an English spectator of Chaucer's heroine:

Yclothed was she, fresh for to devise, Her yellow hair was braided in a tress Behind her back, a yarde long I guess, And in the garden (as the same uprist) She walketh up and down, where as her list.

And then, as Dryden has it:

At every turn she made a little stand, And thrust among the thorns her lily hand.

Madame Guiccioli, who was at that time about twenty, was handsome and lady-like, with an agreeable manner, and a voice not partaking too much of the Italian fervour to be gentle. She had just enough of it to give her speaking a grace--none of her graces appeared entirely free from art; nor, on the other hand, did they betray enough of it to give you an ill opinion of her sincerity and good-humour . . . Her hair was what the poet has described, or rather BLOND, with an inclination to yellow; a very fair and delicate yellow, at all events, and within the limits of the poetical. She had regular features of the order properly called handsome, in distinction to prettiness or piquancy; being well proportioned to one another, large, rather than otherwise, but without coa.r.s.eness, and more harmonious than interesting. Her nose was the handsomest of the kind I ever saw; and I have known her both smile very sweetly, and look intelligently, when Lord Byron has said something kind to her. I should not say, however, that she was a very intelligent person.

Both her wisdom and her want of wisdom were on the side of her feelings, in which there was doubtless mingled a good deal of the self-love natural to a flattered beauty. . . . In a word, Madame Guiccioli was a kind of buxom parlour-boarder, compressing herself artificially into dignity and elegance, and fancying she walked, in the eyes of the whole world, a heroine by the side of a poet. When I saw her at Monte Nero, near Leghorn, she was in a state of excitement and exultation, and had really something of this look. At that time, also, she looked no older than she was; in which respect, a rapid and very singular change took place, to the surprise of everybody. In the course of a few months she seemed to have lived as many years."

This is not very perspicuous portraiture, nor does it show that Mr Hunt was a very discerning observer of character. Lord Byron himself is represented to have said, that extraordinary pains were taken with her education: "Her conversation is lively without being frivolous; without being learned, she has read all the best authors of her own and the French language. She often conceals what she knows, from the fear of being thought to know too much; possibly because she knows I am not fond of blues. To use an expression of Jeffrey's, 'If she has blue stockings, she contrives that her petticoats shall hide them.'"

Lord Byron was at one time much attached to her; nor could it be doubted that their affection was reciprocal; but in both, their union outlived their affection, for before his departure to Greece his attachment had perished, and he left her, as it is said, notwithstanding the rank and opulence she had forsaken on his account, without any provision. He had promised, it was reported, to settle two thousand pounds on her, but he forgot the intention, or died before it was carried into effect. {255} On her part, the estrangement was of a different and curious kind--she had not come to hate him, but she told a lady, the friend of a mutual acquaintance of Lord Byron and mine, that she feared more than loved him.

CHAPTER x.x.xV