My Recollections of Lord Byron
wild difference between the curiosity that prompts the wish to know the
exactitude of any feeling or idea, and the direful passions that
instigate to guilty gratifications."--Galt, 152.
His curiosity was psychological and philosophical, that of a great
artist wishing to explore the heart of man in its darkest depths.
On the eve of his departure from Rome he assisted at the execution of
three assassins, remaining to the end, although this spectacle threw him
into a perfect fever, causing such thirst and trembling that he could
hardly hold up his opera-glass.
At Venice he preferred Madame Benzoni's conversation to that of Madame
Albrizzi, because she was more thoroughly Venetian, and as such more
fitted for the study he wished to make of national manners. He used to
say that _every thing in the world ought to be seen once_, and it is to
this idea that we must specially attribute some of the oddities so
exaggerated and so much criticised during his short stay at Venice, for
in reality he had none of these tastes.
Parry says, "Lord Byron had an insatiable curiosity, he was forever
making questions and researches. He wished me to relate to him all the
most trifling incidents of my life in America, Virginia, and
Canada."--Parry, 180.]
CHAPTER II.
PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON.
The following letter was addressed to M. de Lamartine, who had asked the
author of these pages to give him the "portrait physique" of Lord Byron.
MY DEAR MONSIEUR DE LAMARTINE,--
Being on the point of departure, I nevertheless wish to send you a few
explanations which must serve as my apology. You have asked me to draw
the portrait of Lord Byron, and I have promised you that I would do so.
I now see that my promise was presumptuous. Every time I have endeavored
to trace it, I have had to put down my pen, discouraged as I was by the
fact of my always discovering too many obstacles between my
reminiscences and the possibility of expressing them. My attempts
appeared to me at times to be a profanation by the smallness of their
character; at others, they bore the mark of an extreme enthusiasm,
which, however, seemed to me very weak in its results and very
ridiculous in its want of power. Images which are preserved in thought
to a degree which may almost be considered supernatural, are susceptible
of too much change during the short transit of the mind to the pen.
The Almighty has created beings of such harmonious and ideal beauty that
they defy description or analysis. Such a one was Lord Byron. His
wonderful beauty of expression has never been rendered either by the
brush of the painter or the sculptor's chisel. It summed up in one
magnificent type the highest expression of every possible kind of
beauty. If his genius and his great heart could have chosen a human form
by which they could have been well represented, they could not have
chosen another! Genius shone in his very looks. All the effects and
emotions of a great soul were therein reflected as well as those of an
eminently good and generous heart, and indeed contrasts were visible
which are scarcely ever united in one and the same person. His eyes
seized and betrayed the sentiments which animated him, with a rapidity
and transparency such as called forth from Sir Walter Scott the remark,
that the fine head of his young rival "was like unto a beautiful
alabaster vase lightened up by an interior lamp." To see him, was to
understand thoroughly how really false were the calumnies spread about
as to his character. The mass, by their obstinacy in identifying him
with the imaginary types of his poems, and in judging him by a few
eccentricities of early youth, as well as by various bold thoughts and
expressions, had represented to themselves a factitious Byron, totally
at variance with the real man. Calumnies, which unfortunately he passed
over in disdainful silence, have circulated as acknowledged facts. Time
has destroyed many, but it would not be correct to say that they have
all entirely been destroyed. Lord Byron was silent, because he depended
upon time to silence his calumniators. All those who saw him must have
experienced the charm which surrounded him as a kind of sympathetic
atmosphere, gaining all hearts to him. What can be said to those who
never saw him? Tell them to look at the pictures of him which were
painted by Saunders, by Phillips, by Holmes, or by Westall? All these,
although the works of great artists, are full of faults. Saunders's
picture represents him with thick lips, whereas his lips were
harmoniously perfect: Holmes almost gives him a large instead of his
well-proportioned and elegant head! In Phillips's picture the expression
is one of haughtiness and affected dignity, never once visible to those
who ever saw him.[7]
"These portraits," says Dallas, "will certainly present to the stranger
and to posterity that which it is possible for the brush to reproduce
so far as the features are concerned, but the charm of speech and the
grace of movement must be left to the imagination of those who have had
no opportunity to observe them. No brush can paint these."
The picture of Byron by Westall is superior to the others, but does not
come up to the original. As for the copies and engravings which have
been taken from these pictures, and circulated, they are all
exaggerated, and deserve the appellation of caricatures.
Can his portrait be found in the descriptions given by his biographers?
But biographers seek far more to amuse and astonish, in order that their
writings may be read, than to adhere to the simple truth.
It can not be denied, however, that in the portraits which several, such
as Moore, Dallas, Sir Walter Scott, Disraeli in London, the Countess
Albrizzi at Venice, Beyle (Stendhal) at Milan, Lady Blessington and Mrs.
Shelley in Italy, have drawn of Lord Byron there is much truth,
accompanied by certain qualifications which it is well to explain. I
shall therefore give in their own words (preferring them to my own
impressions) the unanimous testimony of those who saw him, be they
friends or beings for whom he was indifferent. Here are Moore's
words:--"Of his face, the beauty may be pronounced to have been of the
highest order, as combining at once regularity of features with the most
varied and interesting expression.
"His eyes, though of a light gray, were capable of all extremes of
expression, from the most joyous hilarity to the deepest sadness, from
the very sunshine of benevolence to the most concentrated scorn or rage.
But it was in the mouth and chin that the great beauty as well as
expression of his fine countenance lay.
"His head was remarkably small, so much so as to be rather out of
proportion with his face. The forehead, though a little too narrow, was
high, and appeared more so from his having his hair (to preserve it, as
he said) shaved over the temples. Still the glossy dark-brown curls,
clustering over his head, gave the finish to its beauty. When to this is
added that his nose, though handsomely was rather thickly shaped, that
his teeth were white and regular, and his complexion colorless, as good
an idea perhaps as it is in the power of mere words to convey may be
conceived of his features.
"In height he was, as he himself has informed us, five feet eight inches
and a half, and to the length of his limbs he attributed his being such
a good swimmer. His hands were very white, and, according to his own
notions of the size of hands as indicating birth, aristocratically
small."
"What I chiefly remember to have remarked," adds Moore, "when I was
first introduced to him, was the gentleness of his voice and manners,
the nobleness of his air, his beauty, and his marked kindness to myself.
Being in mourning for his mother, the color as well of his dress, as of
his glossy, curling and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure,
spiritual paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he
spoke, there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though melancholy
was their habitual character when in repose."
When Moore saw him again at Venice, some eight years after the first
impressions which Byron's beauty had produced upon him in London (1812),
he noted a change in the character of that beauty.
"He had grown fatter both in person and face, and the latter had most
suffered by the change--having lost by the enlargement of the features
some of that refined and spiritualized look that had in other times
distinguished it.... He was still, however, eminently handsome, and in
exchange for whatever his features might have lost of their high
romantic character, they had become more fitted for the expression of
that arch, waggish wisdom, that epicurean play of humor, which he had
shown to be equally inherent in his various and prodigally gifted
nature; while by the somewhat increased roundness of the contours the
resemblance of his finely-formed mouth and chin to those of the
Belvedere Apollo had become still more striking."[8]
Here are now the words of Lady B----, who saw him a few weeks only
before his last departure for Greece. This lady had conceived a totally
different idea of Byron. According to her, Byron would have appeared
affected, _triste_, in accordance with certain portraits and certain
types in his poems. But, if in order not to cause any jealousy among
the living, she dared not reveal all her admiration, she at least
suffered it to appear from time to time.
"There are moments," she says, "when Lord Byron's face is shadowed over
with the pale cast of thought, and then his head might serve as a model
for a sculptor or a painter to represent the ideal of poesy. His head is
particularly well formed: his forehead is high, and powerfully
indicative of his intellect: his eyes are full of expression: his nose
is beautiful in profile, though a little thickly shaped. His eyebrows
are perfectly drawn, but his mouth is perfection. Many pictures have
been painted of him, but the excessive beauty of his lips escaped every
painter and sculptor. In their ceaseless play they represented every
motion, whether pale with anger, curled in disdain, smiling in triumph,
or dimpled with archness and love."
This portrait can not be suspected of partiality; for, whether justly or
not, she did not enjoy Lord Byron's sympathy, and knew it; she had also
to forgive him various little circumstances which had wounded her "amour
propre," and was obliged to measure her praise in order not to create
any jealousy with certain people who surrounded him and who had some
pretension to beauty.
Here is the portrait of him which another lady (the Comtesse Albrizzi of
Venice) has drawn, notwithstanding her wounded pride at the refusal of
Lord Byron to allow her to write a portrait of him and to continue her
visits to him at Venice:--
"What serenity on his forehead! What beautiful auburn, silken,
brilliant, and naturally curled hair! What variety of expression in his
sky-blue eyes! His teeth were like pearls, his cheeks had the delicate
tint of a pale rose; his neck, which was always bare, was of the purest
white. His hands were real works of art. His whole frame was faultless,
and many found rather a particular grace of manner than a fault in the
slight undulation of his person on entering a room. This bending of the
body was, however, so slight that the cause of it was hardly ever
inquired into."
As I have mentioned the deformity of his foot, even before quoting other
testimonies to his beauty, I shall tarry a while and speak of this
defect, the only one in so pre-eminently favored a being. What was this
defect, since all becomes illustrious in an illustrious man? Was it
visible? Was it true that Lord Byron felt this imperfection so keenly?
Here is the truth.