My Recollections of Lord Byron
and my heaven is as easily made as your Persian's." Making allusions to
this verse--
"_A Persian's heaven is_ easily made,--
_'Tis but black eyes and lemonade_."
But we know that he was thinking of this voyage, in order to divert his
mind from the regret of having been obliged, from motives of honor and
prudence, to give up accompanying into Sicily a family he liked very
much. However, the sight of a camel sufficed to carry him back to Asia
and the Euxine Sea, and to make him cry out: "_Quando te aspiciam!_"
It was also at this time that he wrote to Moore, "All convulsions with
me end in rhyme." To overcome certain agitations of heart, he wrote the
"Bride of Abydos," and directly afterward the "Corsair."
But if the melancholy, more or less deep, that cast its shadows over
this brilliant period of his triumphs, wore specially the above
character, it changed somewhat after his marriage. Thenceforward his
melancholy sprang less from the heart, than from bitter disenchantment;
from the suffering of a proud nature, cruelly wounded in its sentiment
of justice by indignities, calumnies, persecutions, unexampled under
such circumstances. Having already spoken of this marriage, I shall
leave to regular biographers the detailed account of this painful
period, so as only to consider it here under the sole aspect of the
griefs it caused. I will not even stop to mention the unaccountable
melancholy occasioned by a presentiment before marriage, nor the
mysterious sort of agony that seized upon him just as he was about to
kneel for the nuptial ceremony in church, nor even the sadness brought
about by his first experience of the disposition of the person with whom
he had so imprudently linked his fate. I will say, rather, that the
melancholy caused and produced by this marriage was really grief; and of
the kind that most harshly tries, not only firmness of soul, but
likewise true virtue. For all the baseness, cowardice and spirit of
revenge that had lain hidden a moment while his triumphal car passed on,
united at this moment to overwhelm and cast him down. And the means
employed were, instinct with such perversity, that his great moral
courage, always so powerful in helping him to bear contradictions,
disappointments, and personal misfortunes, were no longer of any
assistance, threatened as he was with the greatest calamity that can
possibly befall a man of honor--namely, to be misjudged, calumniated,
accused, thought capable of deeds quite contrary to his high nature.
Neither his courage, firmness, nor even the testimony of conscience
could shield him from great unhappiness. And he suffered all the more
that the blame incurred proceeded from worthy persons who had been
mischievously led into error; nor could he conceal from himself that he
had voluntarily contributed to produce this unhappy state of things, by
not sufficiently avoiding certain appearances, by not attaching
sufficient importance to the opinion of his fellow-men, and having lent
himself, too easily, to misinterpretation.
"The thorns which I have reaped," said he later (but he thought it much
earlier), "are of the tree I planted,--they have torn me,--and I bled; I
should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed."[182]
In addition to all this, Lord Byron had to experience the effects of a
phenomenon of a terrible character, a phenomenon almost peculiar to
England, the tyrannical power of its public opinion. This power, that
gives form and movement to what is called the great world in England,
weighed so heavily on the weak minds of several persons calling
themselves friends, that, with few exceptions, and though all the while
persuaded of the injustice of such opinion, after a few feeble efforts
at changing it, and showing the wrong done to Lord Byron, they lost
courage to declare their belief. Not only did they no longer protest,
but they even pretended to believe part of the stupid calumnies spread
abroad. To a heart firm and devoted as his, which, under similar
circumstances, would have fought to the death in defense of outraged
justice and a persecuted friend, this was one of the most cruel trials
imposed on him by adverse destiny. What he must have suffered at this
period has been already spoken of in another chapter. I will only say
here, that, despite time, and the philosophy, which, subsequently,
restored partial serenity, this wound never quite closed, since, even in
the fourteenth canto of "Don Juan," written shortly before his last
journey into Greece, he still made allusion to it, saying ironically:--
"Without a friend, what were humanity,
To hunt our errors up with a good grace?
Consoling us with--'Would you had thought twice!
Ah! if you had but followed my advice!'
O Job! you had but two friends: one's quite enough,
Especially when we are ill at ease."
Moore adds:--"Lord Byron could not have said, at this time, whether it
was the attacks of his enemies, or the condolences of his friends that
most lacerated his heart."
It was in this state of mind that he quitted England. He visited
Belgium, and its battle-plains, still coming across fields of blood;
went up the Rhine, and spent some months in Switzerland, where the
glaciers, precipices, and the Alps, presented him with a splendid
framework for new poems. All the melancholy to be found in "Childe
Harold" (third canto), in "Manfred," and in his memoranda at that time,
is evidently caused by grief, either of fresh occurrence or renewed by
memory. A smile still sometimes wreathed his lip; but, when the gayety
natural to his age and disposition would fain have taken possession of
his heart, the remembrance of all the indignities he had undergone, rose
up before him as the words _Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin_, did to
_Belshazzar_. And often his fit of gayety ended in a sigh, which even
became habitual after it had ceased to express sorrow. All those who
knew Lord Byron have remarked _this singular and touching sigh_,
attributing it to a melancholy temperament. But it was especially
produced by a crowd of painful indistinct remembrances, intruding upon
him at some moment when he would and could have been happy. So he has
told us in those exquisite lines of his fourth canto of "Childe Harold;"
and he often repeated the same in prose. Thus, for instance, at the time
of his excursions to Mont Blanc and the Glaciers, which, had his heart
been lighter, would have made him so happy, he finished his memoranda
with these melancholy words:--
"In the weather for this tour (of thirteen days) I have been very
fortunate--fortunate in a companion (Hobhouse), fortunate in our
prospects, and exempt from even the little petty accidents and delays
which often render journeys in a less wild country disappointing. I was
disposed to be pleased. I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of
beauty. I can bear fatigue, and welcome privation, and have seen some of
the noblest views in the world. But, in all this, the recollection of
bitterness, and more especially of recent and, more, home
desolation--which must accompany me through life--have preyed upon me
here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the
avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor
the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor
enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty and the power
and the glory around, above, and beneath me."
After having passed eleven months in Switzerland, in about the same
frame of mind, he crossed the Alps, and entered Italy. Who can breathe
the soft air of that beautiful land, without feeling a healing balm
descend on wounds within? The clear atmosphere, and the serene sky, were
to him like the indulgent caresses of a sister, bringing a hope--a
promise--that peace, and even happiness were about to visit his stricken
soul. His first halt was at Milan. There he met with sympathetic, noble
minds, instead of the envious, hypocritical, intolerant spirits that had
caused him so much suffering; sweet and pleasant was it for him to live
with such. Every evening he took his place in a box at the Scala, where
the flower of the young intellects of Milan assembled, and where he met
with other persons of note, such as Abbe de Breme and Silvio Pellico:
gentle, beautiful souls, burning with love of country, and sighing after
its independence. From them he learnt more than ever to detest the
humiliating yoke of foreign despotism that weighed on Italy; with the
independence and frankness of character that belonged to him, he did not
scruple to deplore it openly; and his imprudent generosity became a
source of annoyance, persecution and calumny for himself. There he heard
that passionate music which appeals so strongly to imagination and
heart, because it harmonizes so naturally with all its surroundings in
Italy. It was listening to this music, at times so pathetic and sweet,
that emotion would often lend almost supernatural beauty to his
countenance, so that even Mr. Stendhall, the least enthusiastic of men,
was wont to say with enthusiasm, _that never, in his whole life, had he
seen any thing so beautiful and expressive as Lord Byron's look, or so
sublime as his style of beauty_. There he gave himself freely up to all
the fine emotions that art can raise. Stendhall accompanied him to the
Brera Museum, "_and I admired_," says he, "_the depth of sentiment with
which Lord Byron understood painters of most opposite schools, Raphael,
Guercino, Luini, Titian. Guercino's picture of Hagar dismissed by
Abraham quite electrified him, and, from that moment the admiration he
inspired rendered every body mute around him_."
"He improvised for at least an hour, and even better than Madame de
Stael," says Stendhall again. "One day Monti was invited to recite
before Lord Byron one of his (Monti's) poems which had met in Italy with
most favor,--the first canto of the 'Mascheroniana.'" The reading of
these lines gave such intense pleasure to the author of "Childe Harold"
that Stendhall adds, he shall never forget the divine expression of his
countenance on that occasion. "It was," says he, "the placid air of
genius and power."
Thus taking interest and pleasure in all around him, if he did
experience hours of melancholy (which is very probable, his wounds being
so recent and so deep), he had, at the same time, strength to hide it
from the public eye, and to express it only with his pen.
The single symptom that might be considered to betray, at this time, a
continual malady of soul, was the indifference he showed toward the fair
ladies of Milan, who, on their side, were full of enthusiasm about him,
and with whom he refused to become acquainted, despite all their
advances. But this reserve (though probably more marked and commented on
at this particular moment of which we speak) belonged, nevertheless to
his nature. After having visited Lake Garda with that pleasure he always
experienced from the beauties of nature, and then the tomb of Juliet at
Verona, with the interest excited by a true story even more than by
Shakspeare's poetry (since he could only take real interest in what was
true), he went from Milan to Venice. I have mentioned in another chapter
the impression made on him by Venice in particular, and Italy in
general; how, aided by exterior circumstances, by the sympathies growing
up around him, the severe studies he underwent, so as to keep his heart
calm, and bridle an imagination too liable to be influenced by bitter
memories; in a few months he began a new existence there, with a more
vigorous and healthy impulse for his genius.
When first victimized by the most senseless persecution, he was so
surprised and confounded by the noise and violence of calumny, that his