My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 41

"Juan and Haidee gazed upon each other With swimming looks of speechless tenderness, Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother; All that the best can mingle and express When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another, And love too much, and yet can not love less; But almost sanctify the sweet excess By the immortal wish and power to bless.

XXVII.

"Mix'd in each other's arms, and heart in heart, Why did they not then die?--they had lived too long Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart; Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong."

"_Don Juan,"_ canto iv.

It was this love which caused Campbell the poet to say:

"If the love of Juan and Haidee is not pure and innocent, and expressed with delicacy and propriety, then may we at once condemn and blot out this tender pa.s.sion of the soul from the list of a poet's themes. Then must we shut our eyes and harden our hearts against that pa.s.sion which sways our whole existence, and quite become mere creatures of hypocrisy and formality, and accuse Milton himself of madness."

At Ravenna, where Lord Byron composed so many sublime works, he also wrote "Sardanapalus" and "Heaven and Earth." He was then thirty-two years of age. The love predominating in these two dramas is that which swayed his own soul, the same sentiment which, a year later, also inspired the beautiful poem composed on his way from Ravenna to Pisa.

No quotation could convey an idea of the n.o.ble energetic feeling animating these two dramas, for adequate language is wanting; impervious to words, the sentiment they contain is like a spirit pervading, or a ray of light warming and illuminating them.

They require to be read throughout. I prefer to quote his words on love, in the 16th canto of "Don Juan," and in "The Island," because they are the last traced by his pen. Written a few days previous to his fatal departure for Greece, it can not be doubted that the sentiment which dictated them was the same that accompanied him to his last hour.

CVII.

"And certainly Aurora had renew'd In him some feelings he had lately lost, Or harden'd; feelings which, perhaps ideal, Are so divine, that I must deem them real:--

CVIII.

"The love of higher things and better days; The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance Of what is call'd the world, and the world's ways; The moments when we gather from a glance More joy than from all future pride or praise, Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance The heart in an existence of its own, Of which another's bosom is the zone."[50]

And then, in describing the happiness of two lovers, in his poem of "The Island," a few days before setting out for Greece, he says again:--

"Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre, With such devotion to their ecstasy, That life knows no such rapture as to die; And die they do; for earthly life has naught Match'd with that burst of nature, even in thought; And all our dreams of better life above But close in one eternal gush of love."

After speaking of the religious enthusiast, and saying that his soul preceded his dust to heaven, he adds:--

"Is love less potent? No--his path is trod, Alike uplifted gloriously to G.o.d; Or link'd to all we know of heaven below, The other better self, whose joy or woe Is more than ours."

But enough of quotations; and now what poet has ever written or spoken of love with words and images more chaste, more truly welling from his own heart? We feel that he has given us the key to that. And if, after all these demonstrations, there still remain any readers who continue to accept as true the pleasantries, satires, and mystifications contained in some of his verses, I do not pretend to write for them. They are to be pitied, but there is no hope of convincing them. That depends on their quality of mind. The only thing possible, then, is to recall some of those anecdotes which, while justifying them in a measure, yet at the same time ill.u.s.trate Lord Byron's way of acting. I will select one. When Lord Byron was at Pisa a friend of Sh.e.l.ley's, whom he sometimes saw, had formed a close intimacy with Lady B----, a woman of middle-age but of high birth. The tie between them was evidently the result of vanity on Mr. M----'s side, and, as she was the mother of a large family, it was doubly imperative on her to be respectable. But that did not prevent Mr.

M---- from boasting of his success, and even (that he might be believed) from going into disgusting details in his eagerness for praise.

One day that Mr. M---- was in the same _salon_ (at Mrs. Sh----'s house) with Lord Byron and the Countess G----, the conversation turned upon women and love in general, whereupon Mr. M---- lauded to the skies the devotedness, constancy, and truth of the s.e.x. When he had finished his sentimental "tirade," Lord Byron took up the opposite side, going on as Don Juan or Childe Harold might. It was easy to see he was playing a part, and that his words, partly in jest, partly ironical, did not express his thoughts. Nevertheless they gave pain to Mme. G----, and, as soon as they were alone, Lord Byron having asked her why she was sad, she told him the cause.

"I am very sorry to have grieved you," said he, "but how could you think that I was talking seriously?"

"I did not think it," she said, "but those who do not know you will believe all; M---- will not fail to repeat your words as if they were your real opinions; and the world, knowing neither him nor you, will remain convinced that he is a man full of n.o.ble sentiments, and you a real Don Juan, not indeed your own charming youth, but Moliere's Don Juan!"

"Very probably," said Lord Byron; "and that will be another true page to add to M----'s note-book. I can't help it. I couldn't resist the temptation of punis.h.i.+ng M---- for his vanity. All those eulogiums and sentimentalities about women were to make us believe how charming they had always been toward him, how they had always appreciated his merits, and how pa.s.sionately in love with him Lady B---- is now. My words were meant to throw water on his imaginary fire."

Alas! it was on such false appearances that they made up, then and since, the Lord Byron still believed in by the generality of persons.

Lord Byron by his marriage gave another pledge of having renounced the foibles of the heart and the allurements of the senses; and it is very certain that he redeemed his word. If, through susceptibility or any other defect, Lady Byron, going back to the past or trusting to vile, revengeful, and interested spies, did not know how to understand him, all Lord Byron's friends did, whether or not they dared to say so. And he himself, who never could tell a lie, has a.s.sured us of his married fidelity.[51] His life in Switzerland was devoted to study, retreat, and even austerity. How little this stood him in stead with his enemies is well known. "I never lived in a more edifying manner than at Geneva," he said to Mr. Medwin. "My reputation has not gained by it. Nevertheless, when there is mortification, there ought to be a reward."[52]

When he arrived at Milan many ladies belonging to the great world were most anxious to know him; these presentations were proposed to him, and he refused. As to his life at Venice, a wicked sort of romance has been made of it, by exaggerating most ordinary things, and heaping invention upon invention; but this has been explained with sufficient detail in another chapter, where all the different causes of these exaggerations have been shown in their just measure of truth.[53]

Here, then, I will only say, that if, on arriving at Venice, he relaxed his austerity to lead the life common to young men without legitimate ties: if, under the influence of that lovely sky, he did not remain insensible to the songs of the beautiful Adriatic siren, nor trample under foot the few flowers fate scattered on his path, to make amends perhaps for the thorns that had so long beset it; if he sometimes accepted distractions in the form of light pleasures, as well as in the form of study,[54] did he not likewise always impose hard laborious occupation upon his mind, thus chaining it to beautiful immaterial things? Did his intellectual activity slacken? Was his soul less energetic, less sublime? The works of genius that issued from his pen at Venice are a sufficient reply. "Manfred," conceived on the summit of the Alps, was written at Venice; the fourth canto of "Childe Harold" was conceived and written at Venice. The "Lament of Ta.s.so," "Mazeppa," the "Ode to Venice," "Beppo" (from his studies of Berni), the first two cantos of "Don Juan," were all written at Venice.

Moreover, it was there he collected materials for his dramas; there he studied the Armenian language, making sufficient progress to translate St. Paul's Epistles into English. And all that, in less than twenty-six months, including his journeys to Rome and to Florence. Let moralists say whether a man steeped in sensual pleasures could have done all that.

"The truth is," says Moore, "that, so far from the strength of his intellect being impaired or dissipated by these irregularities, it never was perhaps at any period of his life more than at Venice in full possession of all its energies."[55]

All the concessions Moore was obliged to make, from a sort of weakness, not to compromise his position, to certain extreme opinions in politics or religion, cloaking in reality personal hatred; are they not all destroyed by this single avowal?

Sh.e.l.ley, who came to Venice to see Lord Byron, said that all he observed of Lord Byron's state during his visit gave him a much higher idea of his intellectual grandeur than what he had noticed before. Then it was, and under this impression, that Sh.e.l.ley sketched almost the whole poem of "Julian and Maddalo." "It is in this latter character,"

says Moore, "that he has so picturesquely personated his n.o.ble friend; his allusions to the 'Swan of Albion,' in the verses written on the Engancennes hills, are also the result of this fit of enthusiastic admiration." At Venice Lord Byron saw few English; but those he did see, and who have spoken of him, have expressed themselves in the same way as Sh.e.l.ley; which caused Galt to say, that even at Venice, with regard to his pleasures, his conduct had been that of most young men! but that the whole difference must have consisted in the extravagant delight he took in exaggerating, through his conversation, not what was conducive to honor, but, on the contrary, what was likely to do him harm. The whole difference, however, does not lie here, but rather in the indiscretion shown by some friends.[56] Among the best testimonies borne to his way of living at Venice we must not forget that of Hoppner, who bore so high a character, and who was the constant companion of his daily afternoon walks; nor that of the excellent Father Pascal, who shared his morning studies at the Armenian convent.[57]

But in this united homage to truth I can not pa.s.s over in silence nor refrain from quoting the words of a very great mind, who, under the veil of fiction, has written almost a biography of Lord Byron, and who too independent, _though a Tory_, to _wish_ to conceal his thought, has declared in the preface to his charming work of "Venetia" that Lord Byron was really his hero.

This writer, after speaking of all the silly calumnies with which Lord Byron was overwhelmed at one time, says of the two more especially calculated to stir up opinion against him, those which accused him of _libertinism_ and _atheism_:--

"A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have suspected that abandoned profligacy is not very compatible with severe study, and that an author is seldom loose in his life, even if he be licentious in his writings.

A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have been of opinion that a solitary sage may be the antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying the existence of a G.o.d; but there never are calm inquirers. The world, on every subject, however unequally, is divided into parties; and even in the case of Herbert (Lord Byron) and his writings, those who admired his genius and the generosity of his soul were not content with advocating, princ.i.p.ally out of pique to his adversaries, his extreme opinions on every subject--moral, political, and religious. Besides, it must be confessed, there was another circ.u.mstance almost as fatal to Herbert's character in England as his loose and heretical opinions. The travelling English, during their visits to Geneva, found out that their countryman solaced or enlivened his solitude by unhallowed ties. It is a habit to which very young men, who are separated from or deserted by their wives, occasionally have recourse. Wrong, no doubt, as most things are, but, it is to be hoped, venial; at least in the case of any man who is not also an atheist. This unfortunate mistress of Herbert was magnified into a _seraglio_; extraordinary tales of the voluptuous life of one who generally _at his studies out.w.a.tched the stars_, were rife in English society; and

'h.o.a.ry marquises and stripling dukes,'

who were either _protecting opera-dancers_, or, still worse, _making love to their neighbors' wives_, either looked grave when the name of Herbert (Lord Byron) was mentioned in female society, or affectedly confused, as if they could a tale unfold, if they were not convinced, that the sense of propriety among all present was infinitely superior to their sense of curiosity."

In addition to all the proofs given by the varied uses Lord Byron made of his intellect we must not omit those furnished by the state of his heart. If, too readily yielding at Venice to momentary and fleeting attractions, Lord Byron had been led to squander the powers of youth, to wish to extinguish his senses in order to open out a more vast horizon to his intelligence; if, thus mistaking the means, he had, nevertheless, weakened, enervated, degraded himself, would not his heart have been the first victim sacrificed on the altar of light pleasures?

But, on the contrary, this heart which he had never succeeded in lulling into more than a slumber, when the hour of awakening came, held dominion by its own natural energy over the proud aspirations of his intelligence, and found both his youth and faculty of loving unweakened, and that he had a love capable of every sacrifice, a love as fresh as in his very spring-tide.

Are such metamorphoses possible to withered souls? Moralists have never met with a like phenomenon. On the contrary, they certify that in hearts withered by the enjoyments of sense all generous feelings, all n.o.ble aspirations become extinct.

If Lord Byron's anti-sensuality were not sufficiently proved by his actions, words, writings, and by the undeniable testimony of those who knew him, it might still be abundantly proved by his habits of life, and all his tastes; to begin with his sobriety, which really was wonderful.

So much so, that if the proverb, _Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are_, be true, and founded on psychological observation, one must admit that Lord Byron was almost an immaterial being.

His fine health, his strong and vigorous const.i.tution, lead to the presumption that, at least in childhood and during his boyish days, his rule of life could not have differed from that of the cla.s.s to which he belonged. Nevertheless, his sobriety was remarkable even in early youth; at eighteen he went with a friend, Mr. Pigott, to Tunbridge Wells, and this gentleman says, "We retired to our own rooms directly after dinner, for Byron did not care for drinking any more than myself."

But this natural sobriety became soon after the sobriety of an anchorite, which lasted more or less all his life, and was a perfect phenomenon. Not that he was insensible to the pleasures of good living, and still less did he act from any vanity (as has been said by some incapable of sacrificing the bodily appet.i.tes to the soul); his conduct proceeded from the desire and resolution of making _matter_ subservient to the _spirit_.

His rule of life was already in full force when he left England for the first time. Mr. Galt, whom chance a.s.sociated with Lord Byron on board the same vessel bound from Gibraltar to Malta, affirms that Lord Byron, during the whole voyage, seldom tasted wine; and that, when he did occasionally take some, it was never more than half a gla.s.s mixed with water. He ate but little; and never any meat; only bread and vegetables.

He made me think of the ghoul taking rice with a needle."

On board "La Salsette," returning from Constantinople, he himself wrote to his friend and preceptor Drury, that the gnats which devoured the _delicate body_ of Hobhouse had not much effect on him, because he lived in a _more sober manner_.

As to his mode of living during his two years' absence from England we can say nothing, except that he lived in climates where sobriety is the rule, and that his letters expressed profound disgust at the complaints, exacting tone, and effeminate tastes of his servants, and his own preference for a monastic mode of life, and very probably also for monastic diet. The testimony to his extraordinary sobriety becomes unanimous as soon as he returns home.

Dallas, who saw him immediately on his landing in 1811, writes:--

"Lord Byron has adopted a mode of diet that any one else would have called dying of hunger, and to which several persons even attributed his lowness of spirits. He lived simply on small sea-biscuits, very thin; only eating two of these, and often but one, a day, with one cup of _green tea_, which he generally drank at one in the afternoon. He a.s.sured me that was all the nourishment he took during the twenty-four hours, and that, so far from this regime affecting his spirits, it made him feel lighter and more lively; and, in short, gave him _greater command over himself in all respects. This great abstinence is almost incredible.... He thought great eaters were generally p.r.o.ne to anger, and stupid._"[58]

It was about this time that he made the personal acquaintance of Moore at a dinner given by Rogers for the purpose of bringing them together and of reconciling them.

"As none of us," says Moore, "knew about his singular regime, our host was not a little embarra.s.sed on discovering, that there was nothing on the table which his n.o.ble guest could eat or drink. Lord Byron did not touch meat, fish, or wine; and as to the biscuits and soda-water he asked for, there were, unfortunately, none in the house. He declared he was equally pleased with potatoes and vinegar, and on this meagre pittance he succeeded in making an agreeable dinner."[59]