Life of Lord Byron Volume III Part 17

The following note is the only one, of those I received from him at this time, worth transcribing:--

"December 14. 1814.

"My dearest Tom,

"I will send the pattern to-morrow, and since you don't go to our friend ('of the _keeping_ part of the town') this evening, I shall e'en sulk at home over a solitary potation. My self-opinion rises much by your eulogy of my social qualities. As my friend Scrope is pleased to say, I believe I am very well for a 'holiday drinker.'

Where the devil are you? With Woolridge[61], I conjecture--for which you deserve another abscess. Hoping that the American war will last for many years, and that all the prizes may be registered at Bermoothes, believe me, &c.

"P.S. I have just been composing an epistle to the Archbishop for an especial licence. Oons! it looks serious. Murray is impatient to see you, and would call, if you will give him audience. Your new coat!--I wonder you like the colour, and don't go about, like Dives, in purple."

[Footnote 51: I had frequently, both in earnest and in jest, expressed these hopes to him; and, in one of my letters, after touching upon some matters relative to my own little domestic circle, I added, "This will all be unintelligible to you; though I sometimes cannot help thinking it within the range of possibility, that even _you_, volcano as you are, may, one day, cool down into something of the same _habitable_ state.

Indeed, when one thinks of lava having been converted into b.u.t.tons for Isaac Hawkins Browne, there is no saying what such fiery things may be brought to at last."]

[Footnote 52: Of the lamentable contrast between sentiments and conduct, which this transfer of the seat of sensibility from the heart to the fancy produces, the annals of literary men afford unluckily too many examples. Alfieri, though he could write a sonnet full of tenderness to his mother, never saw her (says Mr. W. Rose) but once after their early separation, though he frequently pa.s.sed within a few miles of her residence. The poet Young, with all his parade of domestic sorrows, was, it appears, a neglectful husband and harsh father; and Sterne (to use the words employed by Lord Byron) preferred "whining over a dead a.s.s to relieving a living mother."]

[Footnote 53: It is the opinion of Diderot, in his Treatise on Acting, that not only in the art of which he treats, but in all those which are called imitative, the possession of real sensibility is a bar to eminence;--sensibility being, according to his view, "le caractere de la bonte de l'ame et de la mediocrite du genie."]

[Footnote 54: Pope.]

[Footnote 55: See Foscolo's Essay on Petrarch. On the same principle, Orrery says, in speaking of Swift, "I am persuaded that his distance from his English friends proved a strong incitement to their mutual affection."]

[Footnote 56: That he was himself fully aware of this appears from a pa.s.sage in one of his letters already given:--"My sister is in town, which is a great comfort; for, never having been much together, we are naturally more attached to each other."]

[Footnote 57: Wife and children, Bacon tells us in one of his Essays, are "impediments to great enterprises;" and adds, "Certainly, the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men." See, with reference to this subject, chapter xviii. of Mr. D'Israeli's work on "The Literary Character."]

[Footnote 58: Milton's first wife, it is well known, ran away from him, within a month after their marriage, disgusted, says Phillips, "with his spare diet and hard study;" and it is difficult to conceive a more melancholy picture of domestic life than is disclosed in his nuncupative will, one of the witnesses to which deposes to having heard the great poet himself complain, that his children "were careless of him, being blind, and made nothing of deserting him."]

[Footnote 59: By whatever austerity of temper or habits the poets Dante and Milton may have drawn upon themselves such a fate, it might be expected that, at least, the "gentle Shakspeare" would have stood exempt from the common calamity of his brethren. But, among the very few facts of his life that have been transmitted to us, there is none more clearly proved than the unhappiness of his marriage. The dates of the birth of his children, compared with that of his removal from Stratford,--the total omission of his wife's name in the first draft of his will, and the bitter sarcasm of the bequest by which he remembers her afterwards,--all prove beyond a doubt both his separation from the lady early in life, and his unfriendly feeling towards her at the close of it.

In endeavouring to argue against the conclusion naturally to be deduced from this will, Boswell, with a strange ignorance of human nature, remarks:--"If he had taken offence at any part of his wife's conduct, I cannot believe that he would have taken this petty mode of expressing it."]

[Footnote 60: In a small book which I have in my possession, containing a sort of chronological History of the Ring, I find the name of Lord Byron, more than once, recorded among the "backers."]

[Footnote 61: Dr. Woolriche, an old and valued friend of mine, to whose skill, on the occasion here alluded to, I was indebted for my life.]

LETTER. 207. TO MR. MURRAY.

"December 31, 1814.

"A thousand thanks for Gibbon: all the additions are very great improvements.

"At last I must be _most_ peremptory with you about the _print_ from Phillips's picture: it is p.r.o.nounced on all hands the most stupid and disagreeable possible: so do, pray, have a new engraving, and let me see it first; there really must be no more from the same plate. I don't much care, myself; but every one I honour torments me to death about it, and abuses it to a degree beyond repeating. Now, don't answer with excuses; but, for my sake, have it destroyed: I never shall have peace till it is. I write in the greatest haste.

"P.S. I have written this most illegibly; but it is to beg you to destroy the print, and have another 'by particular desire.' It must be d----d bad, to be sure, since every body says so but the original; and he don't know what to say. But do _do_ it: that is, burn the plate, and employ a new _etcher_ from the other picture.

This is stupid and sulky."

On his arrival in town, he had, upon enquiring into the state of his affairs, found them in so utterly embarra.s.sed a condition as to fill him with some alarm, and even to suggest to his mind the prudence of deferring his marriage. The die was, however, cast, and he had now no alternative but to proceed. Accordingly, at the end of December, accompanied by his friend Mr. Hobhouse, he set out for Seaham, the seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, the lady's father, in the county of Durham, and on the 2d of January, 1815, was married.

"I saw him stand Before an altar with a gentle bride; Her face was fair, but was not that which made The Starlight of his Boyhood;--as he stood Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock That in the antique Oratory shook His bosom in its solitude; and then-- As in that hour--a moment o'er his face, The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced,--and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reel'd around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been-- But the old mansion, and the accustom'd hall, And the remember'd chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the suns.h.i.+ne, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour, And her, who was his destiny, came back, And thrust themselves between him and the light:-- What business had they there at such a time?"[62]

This touching picture agrees so closely in many of its circ.u.mstances, with his own prose account of the wedding in his Memoranda, that I feel justified in introducing it, historically, here. In that Memoir, he described himself as waking, on the morning of his marriage, with the most melancholy reflections, on seeing his wedding-suit spread out before him. In the same mood, he wandered about the grounds alone, till he was summoned for the ceremony, and joined, for the first time on that day, his bride and her family. He knelt down, he repeated the words after the clergyman; but a mist was before his eyes,--his thoughts were elsewhere; and he was but awakened by the congratulations of the bystanders, to find that he was--married.

The same morning, the wedded pair left Seaham for Halnaby, another seat of Sir Ralph Milbanke, in the same county. When about to depart, Lord Byron said to the bride, "Miss Milbanke, are you ready?"--a mistake which the lady's confidential attendant p.r.o.nounced to be a "bad omen."

It is right to add, that I quote these slight details from memory, and am alone answerable for any inaccuracy there may be found in them.

[Footnote 62: The Dream.]

LETTER 208. TO MR. MURRAY.

"Kirkby, January 6. 1815.

"The marriage took place on the 2d instant: so pray make haste and congratulate away.

"Thanks for the Edinburgh Review and the abolition of the print.

Let the next be from the _other_ of Phillips--I mean (_not_ the Albanian, but) the original one in the exhibition; the last was from the copy. I should wish my sister and Lady Byron to decide upon the next, as they found fault with the last. _I_ have no opinion of my own upon the subject.

"Mr. Kinnaird will, I dare say, have the goodness to furnish copies of the Melodies[63], if you state my wish upon the subject. You may have them, if you think them worth inserting. The volumes in their collected state must be inscribed to Mr. Hobhouse, but I have not yet mustered the expressions of my inscription; but will supply them in time.

With many thanks for your good wishes, which have all been realised, I remain, very truly, yours,

"BYRON."

[Footnote 63: The Hebrew Melodies which he had employed himself in writing, during his recent stay in London.]

LETTER 209. TO MR. MOORE.

"Halnaby, Darlington, January 10, 1815.

"I was married this day week. The parson has p.r.o.nounced it--Perry has announced it--and the Morning Post, also, under the head of 'Lord Byron's Marriage'--as if it were a fabrication, or the puff-direct of a new stay-maker.

"Now for thine affairs. I have redde thee upon the Fathers, and it is excellent well. Positively, you must not leave off reviewing.

You s.h.i.+ne in it--you kill in it; and this article has been taken for Sydney Smith's (as I heard in town), which proves not only your proficiency in parsonology, but that you have all the airs of a veteran critic at your first onset. So, prithee, go on and prosper.

"Scott's 'Lord of the Isles' is out--'the mail-coach copy' I have, by special licence, of Murray.

"Now is _your_ time;--you will come upon them newly and freshly. It is impossible to read what you have lately done (verse or prose) without seeing that you have trained on tenfold. * * has floundered; * * has foundered. _I_ have tried the rascals (i.e. the public) with my Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates. n.o.body but S * * * *y has done any thing worth a slice of bookseller's pudding; and _he_ has not luck enough to be found out in doing a good thing. Now, Tom, is thy time--'Oh joyful day!--I would not take a knighthood for thy fortune. Let me hear from you soon, and believe me ever, &c.

"P.S. Lady Byron is vastly well. How are Mrs. Moore and Joe Atkinson's 'Graces?' We must present our women to one another."