My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 36

Count Gamba also tells us that, to his knowledge, in Florence, a respectable mother of a family, being reduced to great penury by the persecution of a malignant and powerful man, from whom she had protected the honor of one of her _protegees_, Lord Byron, to whom the lady and her persecutor were equally unknown, sent her a.s.sistance, which was powerful enough to counteract the evil designs of her foes. He adds that, having learnt at Pisa that a great number of vessels had been s.h.i.+pwrecked during a violent storm, in the very harbor of Genoa, and that several respectable families were thereby completely ruined, Lord Byron _secretly_ sent them money, and to some more than 300 dollars.

Those who received it never knew their benefactor's name. His charity provided above all for absent ones, for the old, infirm, and retiring.

At Venice, where it was difficult to elude the influence of the climate, and of the manners of the time, and where he shared for a time the mode of life of its young men, it was still charity, and not pleasure, that absorbed the better part of his income. Not satisfied with his casual or out-of-the-way charities, he granted a large number of small monthly and weekly pensions. On definitely leaving Venice to reside in Ravenna, he decided that, in spite of his absence, these pensions should continue until the expiration of his lease of the Palazzo Mocenigo. Venice watched him as jealously as a miser watches his treasure, and when he left it the honest poor were grieved and the dishonest vexed. Listening to these, one might have been led to believe, that Lord Byron had by a vow bound himself and his fortune to the service of Venice, and that his departure was a spoliation of their rights.[38]

In Ravenna his presence had been such a blessing, that his departure was considered a public calamity, and the poor of the city addressed a pet.i.tion to the legate, that he might be entreated to remain.

Not a quarter of his fortune, as Sh.e.l.ley said in extolling his munificence, but the half of it, did he expend in alms. In Pisa, in Genoa, in Greece, his purse was ever open to the needy.

"Not a day of his life in Greece," says his physician, Doctor Bruno, "but was marked by some charitable deed: not an instance is there on record of a beggar having knocked at Lord Byron's door who did not go on his way comforted; so prominent among all his n.o.ble qualities was the tenderness of his heart, and its boundless sympathy with suffering and affliction. His purse was always opened to the poor." After quoting several traits of benevolence, he goes on to say:--"Whenever it came to the knowledge of Lord Byron that any poor persons were lying ill, whatever the maladies or their cause, without even being asked to do it, my lord immediately sent me to attend to the sufferers. He provided the medicines, and every other means of alleviation. He founded at his own expense a hospital in Missolonghi."[39]

This n.o.ble quality of his heart had the ring of true generosity; that generosity which springs from the desire and pleasure to do good, and which is so admirable, that in his own estimate of benevolence he always linked it with a sense of order. It never had any thing in common with the capricious munificence of a spendthrift. His exceeding delicacy, the loyalty and n.o.ble pride of his soul, inspired him with the deepest aversion for that egotism and vanity which alike ignores its own duties and the rights of others.

Lord Byron was, therefore, very methodical in his expenditure. Without stooping to details, he was most careful to maintain equilibrium between his outlay and his income. He attended scrupulously to his bills, and said he could not go to sleep without being on good terms with his friends, and having paid all his debts.[40]

He was often tormented, if his agents were tardy in making remittances, with the dread of not being able to meet his engagements. Of his own gold he was liberal, but he respected the coffers of his creditors.

"I have the greatest respect for money," he often said in jest. He cared for it, indeed, but as a means of obtaining rest for his mind, and especially of helping the poor. Although so generous, he was sometimes annoyed and sorry at the thought of having ill-spent his money, because he had in the same ratio diminished his power of doing good.

We should have given but an unfair idea of the lofty nature of his generosity, if we did not add that it was not sustained by any illusory hopes of grat.i.tude. These illusions his confiding heart had entertained in early manhood, and were those the loss of which he most regretted; but their flight, though causing bitter disappointment, left his conduct uninfluenced. He expected ingrat.i.tude, and was prepared for it; he _gave_, he said, and _did not lend_; and preferred to expose himself to ingrat.i.tude rather than to forsake the unhappy.

We fain would have concluded this long chapter, devoted to the proofs of his goodness in all its manifestations, by gathering the princ.i.p.al testimonies of that goodness which were received after Byron's death, and show it in its original character and in its modifications through life. But we must confine ourselves to the mention of a few testimonies only, taken from among those borne him at the outset and at the end of his life, so as to extend throughout its course, and to show what those who knew him personally, and well, thought of it.

Mr. Pigott, a friend and companion of Byron's, who lived at Southwell, in the neighborhood of Newstead, who travelled with Byron during his holidays, told Moore that few people understood Byron; but that he knew well how naturally sensitive and kind-hearted he was, and that there was not the slightest particle of malignity in his whole composition. Mr.

Pigott, who thus spoke of Byron, was one of the most revered magistrates of his county, and the head of that family with whom Byron was wont to spend his holidays, and who loved him, both before and after his death, as good people only can love and mourn. "Never," says Moore, "did any member of that family allow that Byron had a single fault."

Mr. Lake, another biographer of Byron, says, "I have frequently asked the country people what sort of a man Lord Byron was. The impression of his eccentric but energetic character was evident in the reply. 'He's the devil of a fellow for comical fancies--He flogs th' oud laird to nothing, but he's a hearty good fellow for all that.'"

Here is Dallas's opinion, which can not be suspected of partiality, for reasons which we have elsewhere given; for he believed himself aggrieved, and considered as a great culprit the man who, ever so slightly, could depart from the orthodox religious teachings; who had not a blind admiration of his country; who could suffer his heart to be possessed by an affection which marriage had not legitimatized; who preferred to family pride the satisfaction of paying the debts bequeathed to him by his ancestors, and who could make use of his right of selling his lands. Yet, notwithstanding all this, Mr. Dallas expresses himself to the following effect:--"At this time (1809), when on the eve of publis.h.i.+ng his first satire, and before taking his seat in the House of Lords, I saw Lord Byron every day. (This was the epoch of his misanthropy). Nature had gifted him with most amiable sentiments, which I frequently had occasion to notice, and I have often seen these imprint upon his fine countenance a really sublime expression. His features seemed made expressly to depict the conceptions of genius and the storms of pa.s.sion. I have often wondered with admiration at these curious effects. I have seen his face lighted up by the fire of poetical inspiration, and, under the influence of strong emotions, sometimes express the highest degree of energy, and at others all the softness and grace of mild and gentle affection. When his soul was a prey to pa.s.sion and revenge, it was painful to observe the powerful effect upon his features; but when, on the contrary, he was conquered by feelings of tenderness and benevolence (which was the natural tendency of his heart), it was delightful to contemplate his looks. I went to see Lord Byron the day after Lord Falkland's death. He had just seen the inanimate body of the man with whom, a few days before, he had spent such an agreeable time. At intervals, I heard him exclaim to himself, and half aloud, 'Poor Falkland!' His look was even more expressive than were his words. 'But his wife,' added he, 'she is to be pitied!' One could see his soul filled with the most benevolent intentions, which were sterile.[41] If ever pure action was done, it was that which he then meditated; and the man who conceived it, and who accomplished it, was then progressing through thorns and thistles, toward that free but narrow path which leads to heaven."

Several years later, Mr. Hoppner, English Consul at Venice, and who spent his life with Byron in that city, wrote in a narrative of the causes which created so much disgust in Byron for English travellers, that Byron's affected misanthropy, as observable in his first poems, was by no means natural to him; and he adds, that he is certain that he never met with a man so kind as Byron.

We might stop here, certain as we are that all loyal and reasonable readers are not only convinced of Byron's goodness, but experience a n.o.ble pleasure in admiring it. We can not, however, close this chapter, without calling the attention of our readers to the last and painful proofs given of this kindness and goodness of Byron's nature: we allude to the extraordinary grief, caused by his death.

"Never can I forget the stupefaction," says an ill.u.s.trious writer, "into which we were plunged by the news of his death, so great a part of ourselves died with him, that his death appeared to us almost impossible, and almost not natural. One would have said that a portion of the mechanism of the universe had been stopped. To have questioned him, to have blamed him, became a remorse for us, and all our veneration for his genius was not half so energetically felt as our tenderness for him.

"'His last sigh dissolved the charm, the disenchanted earth Lost all her l.u.s.tre. Where her glittering towers?

Her golden mountains where? All darkened, down To naked waste a dreary vale of years!

The great magician's dead!'"--YOUNG.

Such griefs are certainly reasonable, just, and honorable: for the deaths which bury such treasures of genius are real public calamities.

On hearing of Byron's death, one might repeat the beautiful and eloquent words of M. de Saint Victor:

"What a great crime death has committed! It is something like the disappearance of a star, or the extinction of a planet, with all the creation it supposed. When great minds have accomplished their task, like Shakspeare, Dante, Goethe, their departure from the scene of the world leaves in the soul the sublime melancholy which presides over the setting of the sun, after it has poured out all its rays. But when we hear of the death of a Raphael, of a Mozart, and especially of Byron, struck down in their flight, just at the time when they were extending their course, we can not refrain from calling these an eternal cause for mourning, irreparable losses, and inconsolable regrets! A genius who dies prematurely carries treasures away with him! How many ideal existences were linked with his own! What sublime thoughts vanish from his brow! What great and charming characters die with him, even before they are born! How many truths postponed, at least, for humanity!"

And we will add: to how many great and n.o.ble actions his death has put an end!

Such regrets do honor as much to those who experience them as to those who give them rise. But it is not to the enthusiasm created by his genius, nor to the grief evinced by the Greek nation, for whom he died, that we will turn for a last proof of the goodness of his nature. Such regrets might almost be called interested,--emanating, as they do, from the knowledge of the loss of a treasure. Of the tears of the heart, which were shed for the man without his genius, shall we ask that last proof.

These are the words by which Count Gamba describes his affliction:--

"In vain should I attempt to describe the deep, the distressing sorrow that overwhelmed us all. I will not speak of myself, but of those who loved him less, because they had seen him less. Not only Mavrocordato and his immediate circle, but the whole city and all its inhabitants were, as it seemed, stunned by the blow--it had been so sudden, so unexpected. His illness, indeed, had been known; and for the three last days, none of us could walk in the streets, without anxious inquiries from every one who met us, of 'How is my lord?' We did not mourn the loss of the great genius,--no, nor that of the supporter of Greece--our first tears were for our father, our patron, our friend. He died in a strange land, and among strangers: but more loved, more sincerely wept, he could never have been, wherever he had breathed his last.

"Such was the attachment, mingled with a sort of reverence and enthusiasm, with which he inspired those around him, that there was not one of us who would not, for his sake, have willingly encountered any danger in the world. The Greeks of every cla.s.s and every age, from Mavrocordato to the meanest citizen, sympathized with our sorrows. It was in vain that, when we met, we tried to keep up our spirits--our attempts at consolation always ended in mutual tears."

None but beautiful souls, and those who are really thoroughly good, can be thus regretted; and heartfelt tears are only shed for those who have spent their life in drying those of others.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 34: Galt's Life of Byron, p. 329.]

[Footnote 35: See chapter "Generosity raised to a Virtue."]

[Footnote 36: When travelling in Greece, he often found himself in straitened circ.u.mstances, merely because he had helped a friend.

"It is probable," he wrote to his mother from Athens in 1811, "I may steer homeward in spring: but, to enable me to do that, I must have remittances. My own funds would have lasted me very well: but I was obliged to a.s.sist a friend, who I know will pay me, but in the mean time I am out of pocket."]

[Footnote 37: It may be observed here, that he was not willing, even to confide to paper, the nature and degree of the act of kindness. Hodgson wanted thirty-five thousand francs to establish himself. Byron actually borrowed this amount, to give it to him, as he had not the sum at his disposal.]

[Footnote 38: See his "Life in Italy."]

[Footnote 39: Vide Kennedy.]

[Footnote 40: "Yesterday I paid him (to Scroope Davies) four thousand eight hundred pounds, ... and my mind is much relieved by the removal of that debt," he says in his memorandum of 1813. All his difficulties were inherited from his father, and not contracted by him personally.]

[Footnote 41: Although not rich, and on the point of undertaking a long and expensive journey, he devoted a large sum to the alleviation of the wants of that family.]

CHAPTER X.

QUALITIES AND VIRTUES OF SOUL.

ANTIMATERIALISM.

Among Lord Byron's natural qualities we may rank his antipathy, not only for any thing like low sensuality or gross vice, but even for those follies to which youth and human nature are so p.r.o.ne. Whatever may have been said on this head, and notwithstanding the countenance Lord Byron's own words may have lent to calumnies too widely believed, it will be easy to prove the truth of our a.s.sertion. Let us examine his actions, his words (when serious), the testimony of those who knew him through life, and it will soon appear that this natural antipathy with him often attained to the height of rare virtue.

Lord Byron had a pa.s.sionate nature, a feeling heart, a powerful imagination; and it can not be denied that, after the disappointment he experienced in his ethereal love entertained at fifteen, he fell into the usual round of university life. But as he possessed great refinement of mind, never losing sight of an ideal of moral beauty, such an existence speedily became odious to him. His companions thought it all quite natural and pleasant; but he disapproved of it and blamed himself, feeling ashamed in his own conscience.

It is well known that Lord Byron never spared himself. He invented faults rather than sought to extenuate them. And so he fully merits belief, when he happens to do himself justice. Let us attend to the following:--

"I pa.s.sed my degrees in vice," he says, "very quickly, _but they were not after my taste_. For my juvenile pa.s.sions, though most violent, were concentrated, and did not willingly tend to divide and expand on several objects. I could have renounced every thing in the world with those I loved, or lost it all for them; but fiery though my nature was, _I could not share without disgust in the dissipation common to the place, and time._"

This makes Moore say, that even at the period to which we are alluding, his irregularities were much less sensual, much less gross and varied than those of his companions.

Nevertheless it was his boyish university life that caused Lord Byron to be suspected of drawing his own likeness, when two years later, after his return from the East, he brought out "Childe Harold"--an imaginary hero, whom he imprudently surrounded with real circ.u.mstances personal to himself.

Moore, with his usual good sense, protests strongly against such injustice, saying that, however dissipated his college and university life might have been during the two or three years previous to his first travels, no foundation exists, except in the imagination of the poet, and the credulity or malice of the world, for such disgraceful scenes as were represented to have taken place at Newstead, by way of inferences drawn from "Childe Harold." "In this poem," adds Moore, "he describes the habitation of his hero as a monastic dwelling----