My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 62

Lord Byron--who had a real horror of debt--with his spirit of justice, moderate desires, simple tastes, detached as he was from material enjoyments, and even, perhaps, through pride, would never have fallen into such embarra.s.sments if he had remained _unmarried_. Indeed, his creditors were patiently awaiting the sale of some property. Besides, he was rich enough while unmarried; he could exercise hospitality, travel in good style, not even keep for himself the produce of his works, and, above all, never refuse to perform works of charity and benevolence. He wrote to one of his friends before marriage that his affairs were about to be settled, that he could live comfortably in England, and buy a princ.i.p.ality, if he wished, in Turkey.

Thus, then, marriage alone drew upon him this new disaster, which he must have felt severely, and which, doubtless, led him to make reflections little favorable to the tie so fatally contracted. Then it was that he would have required to meet with kindness, indulgence, and peace at home; thus supported, his heart would have endured every thing.

Instead of that, what did he find? A woman whose jealousy was extreme, and who had her own settled way of living, and was unflinching in her ideas; who united a conviction of her own wisdom to perfect ignorance of the human heart,[140] all the while fancying that she knew it so well; who, far from consenting to modify her habits, would fain have imposed them on others. In short, a woman who had nothing in common with him, who was unable to understand him, or to find the road to his heart or mind; finally, one to whom forgiveness seemed a weakness, instead of a virtue. Is it, then, astonis.h.i.+ng that he should have suffered in such a depressing atmosphere; that he should sometimes have been irritable, and have even allowed to escape him a few words likely to wound the susceptible self-love of his wife?

Lady Byron possessed one of those minds clever at reasoning, but weak in judgment; that can _reason_ much without being _reasonable_, to use the words of a great philosophical moralist of our day; one of those minds that act as if life were a problem in jurisprudence or geometry; who argue, distinguish, and, by dint of syllogisms, _deceive themselves learnedly_. She always deceived herself in this way about Lord Byron.

When she was in the family way, and her confinement drawing near, the storm continued to gather above her husband's head. He was in correspondence with Moore, then absent from London. Moore's apprehensions with regard to the happiness likely to result from a union that had never appeared suitable in his eyes, had, nevertheless, calmed down on receiving letters from Lord Byron that expressed satisfaction.

Yet during the first days of what is vulgarly termed the "honey-moon,"

Lord Byron sent Moore some very melancholy verses, to be set to music, said he, and which begin thus:--

"There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away."

Moore had already felt some vague disquietude, and he asked why he allowed his mind to dwell on such sorrowful ideas? Lord Byron replied that he had written these verses on learning the death of a friend of his childhood, the Duke of Dorset, and, as his subsequent letters were full of jests, Moore became rea.s.sured. Lord Byron said he was happy, and so he really was; for Lady Byron, not being jealous then, continued to be gentle and amiable.

"But these indications of a contented heart soon ceased. His mention of the partner of his home became more rare and formal, and there was observable, I thought, through some of his letters, a feeling of unquiet and weariness that brought back all those gloomy antic.i.p.ations which I had, from the first, felt regarding his fate."

Above all, there were expressions in his letters that seemed of sad augury. For instance, in announcing the birth of his little girl, Lord Byron said that he was absorbed in five hundred contradictory contemplations, although he had only one single object in view, which would probably come to nothing, as it mostly happens with all we desire:--

"But never mind," he said, "as somebody says, '_for the blue sky bends over all_.' I only could be glad if it bent over me where it is a little bluer, like _skyish top of blue Olympus_."

On reading this letter, dated the 5th of January, full of aspirations after a blue sky, Moore was struck with the tone of melancholy pervading it; and, knowing that it was Lord Byron's habit when under the pressure of sorrow and uneasiness, to seek relief in expressing his yearnings after freedom and after other climes, he wrote to him in these terms:--

"Do you know, my dear Byron, there was something in your last letter--a sort of mystery, as well as a want of your usual elasticity of spirits--which has hung upon my mind unpleasantly ever since. I long to be near you, that I might know how you really look and feel, for these letters tell nothing, and one word _a quattr' occhi_, is worth whole reams of correspondence. But only do tell me you are happier than that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied."

"It was," says Moore, "only a few weeks after the exchange of these letters, that Lady Byron took the resolution of separating from him. She had left London at the end of January, on a visit to her parents, in Leicesters.h.i.+re, and Lord Byron was to come and join her there soon after. They had parted with mutual demonstrations of attachment and of good understanding. On the journey Lady Byron wrote a letter to her husband, couched in playful, affectionate language. What, then, must have been his astonishment when, directly after her arrival at Kirby Mallory, her father, Sir Ralph, wrote to tell Lord Byron that his daughter was going to remain with them, and would return to him no more."

This unexpected stroke fell heavily upon him. The pecuniary embarra.s.sments growing up since his marriage (for he had already undergone eight or nine executions in his own house), had then reached their climax. He was then, to use his own energetic expression, _alone at his hearth, his penates transfixed around_; and then was he also condemned to receive the unaccountable intelligence that the wife who had just parted from him in the most affectionate manner, had abandoned him forever.

His state of mind can not be told, nor, perhaps, be imagined. Still he describes it in some pa.s.sages of his letters, showing at the same time the firmness, dignity, and strength of mind that always distinguished him. For example, he wrote to Rogers, two weeks after this thunderbolt had fallen upon him:--

"I shall be very glad to see you if you like to call, though I am at present contending with the 'slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,'

some of which have struck me from a quarter whence I did not, indeed, expect them; but, no matter, there is a 'world elsewhere,' and I will cut my way through this as I can. If you write to Moore, will you tell him that I shall answer his letter the moment I can muster time and spirits. Ever yours,

BYRON."

This strength of mind he only found a month afterward, and then he wrote to him:--

"I have not answered your letter for a time, and at present the reply to it might extend to such a length that I shall delay it till it can be made in person, and then I will shorten it as much as I can. I am at war _with all the world and my wife_, or, rather, all the world and my wife are at war with me, and have not yet crushed me, and shall not crush me, whatever they may do. I don't know that in the course of a hair-breadth existence I was ever, at home or abroad, in a situation so completely uprooted of present pleasure, or rational hope for the future, as this time. I say this because I think so, and feel it. But I shall not sink under it the more for that mode of considering the question. I have made up my mind.

"By the way, however, you must not believe all you hear on the subject; but don't attempt to defend me. If you succeeded in that it would be a mortal, or an immortal, offense. Who can bear refutation?"[141]

And, after having spoken of his wife's family, he concludes in these terms:--

"Those who know what is going on say that the mysterious cause of our domestic misunderstandings is a Mrs. C----, now a kind of house-keeper and spy of Lady N----, who was a washer-woman in former days."

Swayed by this idea, he went so far then in his generosity as to exonerate his wife, and accuse himself; whereupon Moore answered that, "_after all, his misfortunes lay in the choice he had made of a wife, which he_ (Moore) _had never approved_."

Lord Byron hastened to reply that he was wrong, and that Lady Byron's conduct while with him had not deserved the smallest reproach, giving her, at the same time, great praise. But this answer, which, according to Moore, _forces admiration for the generous candor of him who wrote it while adding to the sadness and strangeness of the whole affair_--this answer, of such extraordinary generosity, will better find its place elsewhere. It contains expressions that show his real state of soul under the cruel circ.u.mstances:--

"I have to battle with all kinds of unpleasantness, including private and pecuniary difficulties, etc.

" ...It is nothing to bear the _privations_ of adversity, or, more properly, ill-fortune, but my pride recoils from its _indignities_.

However, I have no quarrel with that same pride, which will, I think, be my buckler through every thing. If my heart could have been broken it would have been so years ago, and by events more afflicting than these.... Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year? I don't wish to claim the character of 'Vates' the prophet, but were they not a little prophetic? I mean those beginning: 'There's not a joy the world can,' etc. They were the truest, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote."

To this letter Moore answered immediately:--

"I had certainly no right to say any thing about the _unluckiness of your choice_, though I rejoice now that I did, as it has drawn from you a tribute which, however unaccountable and mysterious it renders the whole affair, is highly honorable to both parties. What I meant in hinting a doubt with respect to the object of your selection, did not imply the least impeachment of that perfect amiableness which the world, I find, by common consent, allows to her. I only feared that she might have been too perfect, too _precisely_ excellent, _too matter-of-fact a paragon for you to coalesce with comfortably_, ... and that a person whose perfection hung in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened down by some of 'those fair defects which best conciliate love,' would, by appealing more dependently to your protection, have stood a much better chance with your good-nature. All these suppositions, however, I have been led into by my intense anxiety to acquit you of any thing like a capricious abandonment of your wife; and, totally in the dark as I am with respect to all but the fact of your separation, you can not conceive the solicitude--the fearful solicitude--with which I look forward to a history of the transaction from your own lips when we meet--a history in which I am sure of at least one virtue, manly candor."

Those who knew Lord Byron, gifted as he was with so much that seemed to render it impossible for any woman to resign herself to the loss of his love; with so much to make a wife proud of bearing his name; may well ask what strange sort of nature Lady Byron could have possessed to act as she did toward him; and whether, if she really married out of vanity (as Lord Byron one day told Medwin, at Pisa), and her heart being full of pride only, she found some greater satisfaction for her vanity in the courage and perseverance she fancied displayed in deserting him. But, in order to view her inexplicable conduct with any sort of indulgence, we must say that Lady Byron was an only and a spoilt child, a slave to rule, to habits and ideas as unchanging and inflexible as the figures she loved to study; that, being accustomed to the comforts of a rich house, where she was idolized, she could not do without her regular comforts, so generally appreciated and considered necessary by English people. But it was no easy matter to satisfy all her tastes with mathematical regularity, to let her keep up all her habits, and, above all, to make Lord Byron share them in their married life. In the first place, Lord Byron, who was naturally un-English in taste, had, moreover, through his long stay abroad, given up the peculiarities of English habits. He did not dine every day, and when he did it was a cen.o.bite's meal, little suited to the taste of a true Englishman. He breakfasted on a cup of green tea, without sugar, and the yolk of an egg, which was swallowed standing. The comfortable fireside, the indispensable roast-beef, and the regular evening tea, were not appreciated by him; and, indeed, it was a real pain to him to see women eat at all. Not one of his young wife's habits was shared by him. He did not think his soul lost by going to bed at dawn, for he liked to write at night; or by doing other things at what she called irregular hours; and he must have been at least astonished on hearing himself asked, three weeks after marriage, _when he intended giving up his versifying habits_?

But he did not give them up; nor could he have done so had he wished it.

Lady Byron must have flattered herself with the idea of ruling him, of showing the world her power over her husband. As long as their resources sufficed for a life of luxury, both parties might have cherished illusion, and put off reflection. But when creditors, attracted by the name of the wealthy heiress--who in reality had only brought her expectations with her--began to pour in, and that pecuniary embarra.s.sment and humiliations were added to home incompatibilities, then, perhaps, Lord Byron became irritable sometimes, and Lady Byron must have felt more than ever the painful absence of those comforts whose enjoyment cause many other annoyances to be forgotten. She must often have compared her life then, full of mortifications, and, perhaps, of solitude, with the one so comfortable and agreeable (for her) she formerly led at Kirby Mallory, in the midst of her relatives. Indeed, they had spent two months there, both saying they were happy; for at this period of the honey-moon, Lord Byron, kind as he was, doubtless yielded to all the caprices and habits of his hosts. Nevertheless, through the veil of his customary jests and a.s.surances to Moore that he was quite satisfied, it is easy to see how tired he was, and how little the life at Seaham was suited to him.

"I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so totally occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntering, and playing dull games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read old 'Annual Registers' and the daily papers, and gathering sh.e.l.ls on the sh.o.r.e, and watching the growth of stunted gooseberry bushes in the garden, that I have neither time nor sense to say more than yours ever,

BYRON."

And then another time he wrote,--

"I have been very comfortable here, listening to that d----d monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, and in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every evening, except when he plays upon the fiddle. However, they have been very kind and hospitable, and I like them and the place vastly."

Again, feeling his thought in bondage at Seaham, when it would fain have wandered free beneath some sunny sky, he wrote to Moore, "By the way, don't engage yourself in any travelling expedition, as I have a plan of travel into Italy, which we will discuss. And then, think of the poesy wherewithal we should overflow from Venice to Vesuvius, to say nothing of Greece, through all which--G.o.d willing--we might perambulate."

But on quitting Seaham to return home, without preventing Lady Byron from continuing to follow her own tastes, it is likely that he wished to resume his old habits: his beloved solitude, so necessary to him, his fasts, his hours for study and rest, very different from those of Seaham. And then she must have found it troublesome to have a husband, who was not only indifferent to English comforts, but who even disliked to see women eat! who, despite his embarra.s.sments, continued to refuse appropriating for his own use the money given and offered by his publisher, making it over instead to the poor, and even borrowing to help his friends and indigent authors.[142] She could not have known how he would ever get disentangled. Being _extremely jealous_, she became the easy dupe of malicious persons; and under the influence of that wicked woman, Mrs. Claremont, allowed herself to be persuaded that her husband committed grave faults, though in reality they were but slight or even imaginary ones. She forced open his writing-desk, and found in it several proofs of intrigues that had taken place _previous_ to his marriage. In the frenzy of her jealousy, Lady Byron sent these letters to the husband of the lady compromised, but he had the good sense to take no notice of them. Such a revolting proceeding on the part of Lady Byron requires no commentary: it can not be justified. Meanwhile the conjugal abode was given up to bailiffs, and desolation reigned in Lord Byron's soul. He had lately become a father. This was the moment that his wife chose for leaving him; and the first proof of love she gave their daughter, as soon as she set foot in her own home, was to abandon that child's father and the house where she could no longer find the mode of life to which she had been accustomed. At Kirby Mallory, the vindictive Lady Noel, who detested Lord Byron, doubtless did the rest, together with the governess. And the young heiress, just enriched by a legacy inherited from an uncle, thus newly restored to wealth, had not courage to leave it and them all again. With the kind of nature she possessed, she must have taken pride in a sort of exaggerated firmness; thus seeking to gain strength for trampling under foot all heart-emotions, as if they were so many weaknesses, incompatible with the stern principles that she considered virtues. By a.s.suming the point of view proper to some minds, it is easy to conceive all this, especially when one knows England.

But was it really for the purpose of allowing her to give such a spectacle to the world, and to secure for herself the comforts of life, that G.o.d had given to her keeping Lord Byron's n.o.ble spirit? Did she forget that it was not simply a good, honest, ordinary man, like the generality of husbands, that she had married; but that Heaven, having crowned his brow with the rays of genius, imposed far other obligations on his companion? Did she forget that she was responsible before G.o.d and before that country whose pride he was about to become? Ought she to have preferred an easy life to the honor of being his wife; of sustaining him in his weaknesses; of consoling and forgiving him, if necessary; in short, of being his guardian angel? If she aspired to the reputation of a virtuous woman, could true virtue have done otherwise?

Ere this G.o.d has judged her above; but, here below, can those possessing hearts have any indulgence for her?

We hear constantly repeated--because it was once said--that men of great genius are less capable than ordinary individuals of experiencing calm affections and of settling down into those easy habits which help to cement domestic life. By dint of repeating this it has become an axiom.

But on what grounds is it founded? Because these privileged beings give themselves to studies requiring solitude, in order to abstract and concentrate their thoughts; because, their mental riches being greater, they are more independent of the outer world and the intellectual resources of their fellow-creatures; because, through the abundance of their own resources, their mind acquires a certain refinement, likely to make them deem the society of ordinary persons tiresome; does it therefore necessarily follow that the goodness and sensibility of their hearts are blunted, and that there may not be, amid the great variety of women, hearts and minds worthy of comprehending them, and of making it their duty to extend a larger amount of forbearance and indulgence in return for the glory and happiness of being the companions of these n.o.ble beings? It is remarked, in support of the above theory, that almost all men of genius who have married--Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, Dryden, Byron, and many others--were unhappy. But have these observers examined well on which side lay the cause of unhappiness? Who will say that if Dante, instead of Gemma Donati, "the ferocious wife" (a thought expressed by Lord Byron in his "Prophecy," evidently to appropriate it to himself, speaking of "_the cold companion who brought him ruin for her dowry_);" who will say that if Dante, instead of Gemma Donati, had married his Beatrice Portinari, she would not have been the companion and soother of his exile? that the bread of the foreigner shared with her would not have seemed _less bitter_? and that he would not have found it _less fatiguing to mount, leaning on her, the staircase leading to another's dwelling_?--

"Lo scendere e il salio per l'altrin scale."--DANTE.

And can we doubt that Milton's misfortune was caused by his unhappy choice of a wife, since almost directly after her arrival at their conjugal home she became alarmed at her husband's literary habits and also at the solitude and poverty reigning in the house, and finally abandoned him after a month's trial? To speak only of England, was it not from similar causes, or nearly so, that the amiable Shakspeare's misfortune arose--also that of Dryden, Addison, Steele? And, indeed, the same may be said of all the great men belonging to whatsoever age or country.

If we were to enter into a polemic on this subject, or simply to make conscientious researches, there would be many chances of proving, in opposition to the axiom, that the fault of these great men lay in the bad choice of their helpmates. In truth, if there have been a Gemma Donati and a Milbank, we also find in ancient times a Calpurnia and a Portia among the wives of great men; and, in modern times, wives of poets, who have been the honor of their s.e.x, proud of their husbands, and living only for them. Ought not these examples at least to destroy the absolute nature of the theory, making it at best conditional? The larger number of great men, it is true, did not marry; of this number we find, Michael Angelo, Raphael, Petrarch, Ariosto, Ta.s.so, Cervantes, Voltaire, Pope, Alfieri, and Canova; and many others among the poets and philosophers, Bacon, Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, and Leibnitz.

What does that prove, if not that they either would not or could not marry, but certainly not that they were incapable of being good husbands? Besides, a thousand causes--apart from the fear of being unhappy in domestic life, considerations of fortune, prior attachments, etc.--may have prevented them. But as to Lord Byron, at least, it is still more certain with regard to him than to any other, that he might have been happy had he made a better choice: if circ.u.mstances had only been tolerable, as he himself says. Lord Byron had none of those faults that often disturb harmony, because they put the wife's virtue to too great a trial. If the best disposition, according to a deep moralist, is that which gives much and exacts nothing, then a.s.suredly his deserves to be so characterized. Lord Byron exacted nothing for himself. Moreover, discussion, contradiction, teasing, were insupportable to him; his amiable jesting way even precluded them. In all the circ.u.mstances and all the details of his life he displayed that high generosity, that contempt of petty, selfish, material calculations so well adapted for gaining hearts in general, and especially those of women. Add to that the _prestige_ belonging to his great beauty, his wit, his grace, and it will be easy to understand the love he must have inspired as soon as he became known.

"Pope remarks," says Moore, "that extraordinary geniuses have the misfortune to be admired rather than loved; but I can say, from my own personal experience, that Lord Byron was an exception to this rule."[143]

Nevertheless, Lord Byron, though exceptional in so many things, yet belonged to the first order of geniuses. Therefore he could not escape some of the laws belonging to these first-rate natures: certain habits, tendencies, sentiments--I may almost say infirmities--of genius deriving their _origin from the same sympathies, the same wants_.

He required to have certain things granted to him: his hours for solitude, the silence of his library, which he sometimes preferred to every thing, even to the society of the woman he loved. It was wrong to wish by force to shut him up to read the Bible, or to make him come to tea and regulate all his hours as a good priest might do. When he was plunged in the delights of Plato's "Banquet," or conversing with his own ideas, it was folly to interrupt him. But this state was exceptional with him. "_One does not have fever habitually_," said he of himself, characterizing this state of excitement that belongs to composition; and as soon as he returned to his usual state, and that his mind, disengaged from itself, came down from the heights to which it had soared, what amiability then, what a charm in all he said and did! Was not one hour pa.s.sed with him then a payment with rich usury for all the little concessions his genius required? And lastly, if we descend well into the depths of his soul, by all he said and did, by all his sadness, joy, tenderness, we may be well convinced that none more than he was susceptible of domestic happiness.

"If I could have been the husband of the Countess G----," said he to Mrs. B----, a few days only before setting out for Greece, "we should have been cited, I am certain, as samples of conjugal happiness, and our retired domestic life would have made us respectable! But alas! I can not marry her."

It is also by his latest affections that he proved how, if he had been united to a woman after his own heart, he might have enjoyed and given all the domestic happiness that G.o.d vouchsafes us here below, and that when love should have undergone the transformations produced by time and custom, he would have known how to replace the poetic enchantments of love's first days, by feelings graver, more unchanging too, and no less tender and sacred.