The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 95

Why does Lady H. always have that d.a.m.ned screen between the whole room and the fire? I, who bear cold no better than an antelope, and never yet found a sun quite _done_ to my taste, was absolutely petrified, and could not even s.h.i.+ver. All the rest, too, looked as if they were just unpacked, like salmon from an ice-basket, and set down to table for that day only. When she retired, I watched their looks as I dismissed the screen, and every cheek thawed, and every nose reddened with the antic.i.p.ated glow.

Sat.u.r.day, I went with Harry Fox to _Nourjahad_; and, I believe, convinced him, by incessant yawning, that it was not mine. I wish the precious author would own it, and release me from his fame. The dresses are pretty, but not in costume;--Mrs. Horn's, all but the turban, and the want of a small dagger (if she is a sultana), _perfect_. I never saw a Turkish woman with a turban in my life--nor did any one else. The sultanas have a small poniard at the waist. The dialogue is drowsy--the action heavy--the scenery fine--the actors tolerable. I can't say much for their seraglio--Teresa, Phannio, or----, were worth them all.

Sunday, a very handsome note from Mackintosh, who is a rare instance of the union of very transcendent talent and great good nature. To-day (Tuesday) a very pretty billet from M. la Baronne de Stael Holstein. [5]

She is pleased to be much pleased with my mention of her and her last work in my notes. I spoke as I thought. Her works are my delight, and so is she herself, for--half an hour. I don't like her politics--at least, her _having changed_ them; had she been _qualis ab incepto_, it were nothing. But she is a woman by herself, and has done more than all the rest of them together, intellectually;--she ought to have been a man.

She _flatters_ me very prettily in her note;--but I _know_ it. The reason that adulation is not displeasing is, that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie, to make us their friend:--that is their concern.

----is, I hear, thriving on the repute of a _pun_ which was _mine_ (at Mackintosh's dinner some time back), on Ward, who was asking, "how much it would take to _re-whig_ him?" I answered that, probably, "he must first, before he was _re-whigged_, be re-_warded_." [6] This foolish quibble, before the Stael and Mackintosh, and a number of conversationers, has been mouthed about, and at last settled on the head of----, where long may it remain!

George [7] is returned from afloat to get a new s.h.i.+p. He looks thin, but better than I expected. I like George much more than most people like their heirs. He is a fine fellow, and every inch a sailor. I would do any thing, _but apostatise_, to get him on in his profession.

Lewis called. It is a good and good-humoured man, but pestilently prolix and paradoxical and _personal_ [8]. If he would but talk half, and reduce his visits to an hour, he would add to his popularity. As an author he is very good, and his vanity is _ouverte_, like Erskine's, and yet not offending.

Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella [9], which I answered.

What an odd situation and friends.h.i.+p is ours!--without one spark of love on either side, and produced by circ.u.mstances which in general lead to coldness on one side, and aversion on the other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled, which is strange in an heiress--a girl of twenty--a peeress that is to be, in her own right--an only child, and a _savante_, who has always had her own way. She is a poetess--a mathematician--a metaphysician, and yet, withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages.

[Footnote 1: Sir Samuel Romilly (1757-1818), Solicitor-General (1806-7), distinguished himself in Parliament by his consistent advocacy of Catholic Emanc.i.p.ation, the abolition of the slave-trade, Parliamentary reform, and the mitigation of the harshness of the criminal law. Writing of Romilly's 'Observations on the Criminal Law of England' (1810), Sir James Mackintosh says,

"It does the very highest honour to his moral character, which, I think, stands higher than that of any other conspicuous Englishman now alive. Probity, independence, humanity, and liberality breathe through every word; considered merely as a composition, accuracy, perspicuity, discretion, and good taste are its chief merits; great originality and comprehension of thought, or remarkable vigour of expression, it does not possess."

The death of his wife, October 29, 1818, so affected Romilly's mind that he committed suicide four days later.

"Romilly," said Lord Lansdowne to Moore ('Memoirs, etc'., vol. ii. p.

211), "was a stern, reserved sort of man, and she was the only person in the world to whom he wholly unbent and unbosomed himself; when he lost her, therefore, the very vent of his heart was stopped up."]

[Footnote 2: Sir Samuel Bentham (1757-1831), naval architect and engineer, like his brother Jeremy, was a strong reformer. He was a Knight of the Russian Order of St. George, and, like Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges, who was a Knight of the Swedish Order of St. Joachim before he was created a baronet (1814), a.s.sumed the t.i.tle in England.]

[Footnote 3: Francis Horner (1778-1817), called to the Scottish Bar in 1800, and to the English Bar in 1807, was one of the founders of the 'Edinburgh Review', and acted as second to Jeffrey in his duel with Moore. In the House of Commons (M.P. for St. Ives, 1806-7; Wendover, 1807-12; St. Mawes, 1812-17) he was one of the most impressive speakers of the day, especially on financial questions. When Lord Morpeth moved (March 3, 1817) for a new writ for the borough of St. Mawes, striking tributes were paid to his character from both sides of the House ('Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner', vol. ii. pp. 416-426), and further proof was given of public esteem by the statue erected to his memory in Westminster Abbey. The speeches delivered in the Lower House on March 3, 1817, were translated by Ugo Foscolo, and published with a dedication 'al n.o.bile giovinetto, Enrico Fox, figlio di Lord Holland'.]

[Footnote 4: George Philips, only son of Thomas Philips of Sedgley, Lancas.h.i.+re (born March 24, 1766), was created a baronet in February, 1828. He sat for South Warwicks.h.i.+re in the first reformed House of Commons.]

[Footnote 5: In a note to 'The Bride of Abydos' (Canto I. st. vi.), Byron had written,

"For an eloquent pa.s.sage in the latest work of the first female writer of this, perhaps of any, age, on the a.n.a.logy (and the immediate comparison excited by that a.n.a.logy) between 'painting and music,' see vol. iii. cap. 10, 'De l'Allemagne'."

The pa.s.sage is as follows (Part III. chap, x.):

"Sans cesse nous comparons la peinture a la musique, et la musique a la peinture, parceque les emotions que nous eprouvons nous revelent des a.n.a.logies ou l'observation froide ne verroit que des differences,"

etc., etc.

The following is Madame de Stael's "very pretty billet:"

"Argyll St., No. 31.

"Je ne saurais vous exprimer, my lord, a quel point je me trouve honoree d'etre dans une note de votre poeme, et de quel poeme! il me semble que pour la premiere fois je me crois certaine d'un nom d'avenir et que vous avez dispose pour moi de cet empire de reputation qui vous sera tous les jours plus soumis. Je voudrais vous parler de ce poeme que tout le monde admire, mais j'avouerai que je suis trop suspecte en le louant, et je ne cache pas qu' une louage de vous m'a fait epreuver un sentiment de fierte et de reconaissance qui me rendrait incapable de vous juger; mais heureus.e.m.e.nt vous etes au dessus du jugement.

"Donnez moi quelquefois le plaisir de vous voir; il-y-a un proverbe francais qui dit qu'un bonheur ne va jamais sans d'autre.

"DE STAeL."]

[Footnote 6:

"Byron," writes Sir Walter Scott, in a hitherto unpublished note, "occasionally said what are called good things, but never studied for them. They came naturally and easily, and mixed with the comic or serious, as it happened. A professed wit is of all earthly companions the most intolerable. He is like a schoolboy with his pockets stuffed with crackers.

"No first-rate author was ever what is understood by a 'great conversational wit'. Swift's wit in common society was either the strong sense of a wonderful man unconsciously exerting his powers, or that of the same being wilfully unbending, wilfully, in fact, degrading himself. Who ever heard of any fame for conversational wit lingering over the memory of a Shakespeare, a Milton, even of a Dryden or a Pope?

"Johnson is, perhaps, a solitary exception. More shame to him. He was the most indolent great man that ever lived, and threw away in his talk more than he ever took pains to embalm in his writings.

"It is true that Boswell has in great measure counteracted all this.

But here is no defence. Few great men can expect to have a Boswell, and none 'ought' to wish to have one, far less to trust to having one.

A man should not keep fine clothes locked up in his chest only that his valet may occasionally show off in them; no, nor yet strut about in them in his chamber, only that his valet may puff him and his finery abroad.

"What might not he have done, who wrote 'Ra.s.selas' in the evenings of eight days to get money enough for his mother's funeral expenses? As it is, what has Johnson done? Is it nothing to be the first intellect of 'an age'? and who seriously talks even of Burke as having been more than a clever boy in the presence of old Samuel?"]

[Footnote 7: George Anson Byron, R. N., afterwards Lord Byron.]

[Footnote 8: Scott has this additional note on Lewis:

"Nothing was more tiresome than Lewis when he began to harp upon any extravagant proposition. He would tinker at it for hours without mercy, and repeat the same thing in four hundred different ways. If you a.s.sented in despair, he resumed his reasoning in triumph, and you had only for your pains the disgrace of giving in. If you disputed, daylight and candle-light could not bring the discussion to an end, and Mat's arguments were always 'ditto repeated'."]

[Footnote 9: Miss Milbanke, afterwards Lady Byron.]

Wednesday, December 1, 1813.

To-day responded to La Baronne de Stael Holstein, and sent to Leigh Hunt (an acquisition to my acquaintance--through Moore--of last summer) a copy of the two Turkish tales. Hunt is an extraordinary character, and not exactly of the present age. He reminds me more of the Pym and Hampden times--much talent, great independence of spirit, and an austere, yet not repulsive, aspect. If he goes on _qualis ab incepto_, I know few men who will deserve more praise or obtain it. I must go and see him again;--the rapid succession of adventure, since last summer, added to some serious uneasiness and business, have interrupted our acquaintance; but he is a man worth knowing; and though, for his own sake, I wish him out of prison, I like to study character in such situations. He has been unshaken, and will continue so. I don't think him deeply versed in life;--he is the bigot of virtue (not religion), and enamoured of the beauty of that "empty name," as the last breath of Brutus p.r.o.nounced [1], and every day proves it. He is, perhaps, a little opinionated, as all men who are the _centre_ of _circles_, wide or narrow--the Sir Oracles, in whose name two or three are gathered together--must be, and as even Johnson was; but, withal, a valuable man, and less vain than success and even the consciousness of preferring "the right to the expedient" might excuse.

To-morrow there is a party of _purple_ at the "blue" Miss Berry's. Shall I go? um!--I don't much affect your blue-bottles;--but one ought to be civil. There will be, "I guess now" (as the Americans say), the Staels and Mackintoshes--good--the----s and----s--not so good--the----s, etc., etc.--good for nothing. Perhaps that blue-winged Kashmirian b.u.t.terfly of book-learning [2], Lady Charlemont, will be there. I hope so; it is a pleasure to look upon that most beautiful of faces.