My Recollections of Lord Byron
fair chance: it is from experience, not books, we ought to judge of
them. There is nothing like inspection and trusting to our senses."
But while cherishing these ideas, his mind at the same time wavered
between the two projects,--Parliament attracted him greatly. Despite his
light words, the love of true and merited glory, of the beautiful and
the good, ever inflamed his heart. What he wrote a year or two before,
to his counsellor and friend, the Rev. Mr. Beecher, had not ceased to be
his programme.[165] He said to his mother, a short time before his
majority, that he thought it indispensable, "as a preparation for the
future, to make a speech in the House, as soon as he was admitted." He
wrote the same thing still more explicitly to Harness; for he then
thought seriously of entering upon politics without delay, and his
rights as a hereditary legislator paved the way for it. Nevertheless,
being hurt, disappointed, and indignant at his guardian's conduct, and
feeling himself isolated, he not only renounced taking any active part
in the debates of his colleagues, but, according to Moore, appeared to
consider the obligation of being among them painful and mortifying.
Thus, a few days after entering Parliament, he returned disgusted to the
solitude of his abbey, there to meditate on the bitterness of precocious
experience, or upon scenes that appeared more vast to his independent
spirit, than those which his country presented.
The final decision soon came. He resolved on leaving England and taking
a long journey with his friend Hobhouse, on seeking sunshine,
experience, and forgetfulness for his wounded soul. It seemed really at
that moment as if, through an accumulation of disappointment, injustice
and grief, the result of lost illusions (he had already written the
epitaph on "Boatswain"), as if, I say, some germs of misanthropy were
beginning to appear. But his bitterness did not reach, or rather, did
not change his heart: every thing proves this. One of his friends, Lord
Faulkland, was killed in a duel about this time; and our misanthrope not
only was inconsolable, but, despite the embarrassment of his own
affairs, generously assisted the family of the deceased, who had been
left in distress. Dallas, who, through his prejudices, personal
susceptibilities, and exaggerated opinions, shows so little indulgence
to Lord Byron, thus describes however the impression made on him, and
his conduct under the circumstances:--
"Nature had gifted Lord Byron with most benevolent sentiments, which I
had frequent opportunities of perceiving; and I sometimes saw them give
to his beautiful countenance an expression truly sublime. I paid him a
visit the day after Lord Faulkland's death; he had just seen the
lifeless body of one in whose society he had lately passed a pleasant
day. He was saying to himself aloud, from time to time--'Poor
Faulkland!' His look was more expressive than his words. 'But,' he
added, 'his wife! 'tis she that is to be pitied!' I read his soul full
of the kindest intentions, nor were they sterile. If ever there were a
pure action, it was the one he meditated then; and the man who conceived
and accomplished it was at that moment advancing through thorns and
briers toward the free but narrow path that leads to heaven."[166]
He was setting out then on a long journey. And at that period long
journeys were serious things. His first desire was to have a farewell
meeting at Newstead, of all his old school-fellows. And that not
sufficing, he even wished to carry their image away with him, so as to
enjoy a sensible means of recalling tender remembrances of the past. But
his heart found an aliment for misanthropy in the selfish answer given
by one of his comrades, who was alarmed at the expense of getting a
portrait taken. We see the impression made by this ungenerous reply, in
the letter he addressed to his friend Harness:--
"I am going abroad, if possible, in the spring, and before I depart I am
collecting the pictures of my most intimate school-fellows. I want
yours; I have commissioned one of the first miniature painters of the
day to take them, of course, at my own expense, as I never allow any to
incur the least expenditure to gratify a whim of mine. To mention this
may seem indelicate; but when I tell you a friend of ours first refused
to sit, under the idea that he was to _disburse_ on the occasion, you
will see that it is _necessary_ to state these preliminaries, to prevent
the recurrence of any similar mistake. It will be a tax on your patience
for a week, but pray excuse it, as it is possible the resemblance may be
the sole trace I shall be able to preserve of our past friendship. Just
now it seems foolish enough, but in a few years, when some of us are
dead, and others are separated by inevitable circumstances, it will be a
kind of satisfaction to retain, in these images of the living, the idea
of our former selves, and to contemplate, in the resemblances of the
dead, all that remains of judgment, feeling, and a host of passions."
If misanthropy had not been an element heterogeneous to his character,
it might well have assumed larger proportions at this moment; for, on
the very eve of his departure from England, his heart had yet to suffer
one of those chilling shocks to which sensitive natures, removed far
above the usual temperature of the world, says Moore, are only too much
exposed. And this proof of coldness, which he complains of with
indignation in a note to the second canto of "Childe Harold," was given
precisely by one of the friends he most loved. Mr. Dallas, who witnessed
the immediate effect produced by this mark of coldness, thus describes
it:
"I found him bursting with indignation. '_Will you believe it?_' said
he, 'I _have just_ met ---- and asked him to come and sit an hour with
me; he excused himself; and what do you think was his excuse? He was
engaged with his mother and some ladies to go shopping! And he knows I
set out to-morrow to be absent for years, perhaps never to return?
Friendship! I do not believe I shall leave behind me, yourself and
family excepted, and perhaps my mother, a single being who will care
what becomes of me!'"[167]
The conduct of this friend gave him so much pain, that a year after he
wrote again about it, from Constantinople, to Dallas:--
"The only person I counted would feel grieved at my departure took leave
of me with such coldness, that if I had not known the heart of man I
should have been surprised. I should have attributed it to some offenses
on my part, had I ever been guilty of aught save _too much affection_
for him."
Dallas thought that some lady, from a spirit of vengeance, had excited
this young man to slight Lord Byron.
I will not here seek to discover whether he was right or wrong. It
suffices that he could believe it, for me to say, that this singular
misanthropy, born of heart-deceptions, was in reality nothing else but
grief, the causes of which might each be enumerated, but the intensity
of which we do not really know, since that deep capacity is the sad
privilege of beings highly endowed.
In any case, it is certain that when he left England the measure of
disappointments capable of producing real melancholy in such a sensitive
heart was quite filled up. Is it, then, surprising that he, like his
hero, "Childe Harold," should see with indifference the shores of his
native land recede? But if, unhappily, the gloomy ideas he welcomed for
a moment brought about a regrettable habit, no more to be lost, of
adopting, in his language spoken and written, expressions and
mystifications that too often concealed his real feelings, only letting
them be seen through the medium of his mind (a sure way of making him
misunderstood), he could not long stand against the proofs of real
attachment shown him by his fellow-traveller, and, indeed, by all who
came near him. Even before setting sail, the influence of this
sentiment, combined with his natural disposition to gayety, became
visible; all annoyances seemed forgotten in the agreeable sensation of a
first voyage that was to bear him away from the country where he had
suffered so much, and which would probably show him, in other lands,
more favorable specimens of the human race. Indeed, this is quite
evident in the letters and gay verses sent off from Falmouth to his
friends Drury and Hodgson, as well as in the more serious strain, though
still gay and affectionate, in which he, at the same time, addressed his
mother.[168]
Hardly had he landed at Lisbon, when his heart, yearning after the
beautiful, expanded into admiration at sight of the Tagus and the
beauties of Cintra; displaying alike his high moral sense of things,
whether he expressed admiration or inflicted blame.[169]
We see his whole nature revolt at baseness, ingratitude, cowardice,
ferocity, all kinds of moral deformity; just as much as it was attracted
and delighted by patriotism, courage, devotion, sacrifice, love carried
to heroism, grace, and beauty. We perceive, in the poet's soul, a
freshness and a moral vigor, that shine all the more brightly,
contrasted with the misanthropical melancholy of the hero of his legend.
But this personage had been imprudently chosen to typify a state of mind
into which youth often falls, and which, perhaps, Lord Byron himself
went through during a few short hours of disenchantment. The impressions
thus gathered, were treasured in his memory until they came to maturity
some months later; then they issued from his pen in flowing numbers,
whose magic power he then ignored: but assuredly the fine sentiments
expressed came from the soul of the minstrel, not from the satiated
feelingless hero, who was incapable of experiencing them. Let people
only make the distinction between the two personages whom malice has
taken pleasure in confounding, an error willingly adopted by a certain
set and imposed on credulous minds.[170]
The relation between the two is not one of family or race, but a purely
accidental external resemblance; the result of some strange fancy and
intellectual want in the poet, whose powerful imagination, while having
recourse only to his own spontaneity for the creation of ideal beings
and types, yet required to rest always on reality, for painting the
material world and for embodying his metaphysical conceptions.
Thus these two personages leave the same shore, on the same vessel, to
make the same voyage, and meet with the same adventures. Both have the
same family relations,--a mother, a sister; yes, but their souls are not
in the same state, because not of the same nature. That results clearly
from a simple inspection of the poem, for all who read in good faith;
since, out of 191 stanzas that make up the first two cantos of "Childe
Harold," there are 112 wherein the poet forgets his hero, speaks in his
own name, and shows his real soul--a soul full of energy and beauty,
becoming enthusiastic at sight of the wonders displayed in creation, of
grandeur, virtue, and love.
Moralists of good faith can tell whether a mind that was corrupted,
satiated, wearied, could possibly have felt such enthusiasm. In reality,
these emotions betokened the future poet, then unknown to the world and
to himself. Let us return to the man,--the best justification for the
poet. From Lisbon he wrote another letter, full of fun, to his friend
Hodgson. Already he found all well; better than in England. Already he
declared himself greatly amused with his pilgrimage: the sight of the
Tagus pleased him, Cintra delighted him; he talked Latin at the convent,
fed on oranges, embraced every body, asked news of every body and every
thing; "and we find him," says Moore, "in this charming, gay, sportive,
schoolboy humor, just at the very moment that 'Childe Harold' is about