My Recollections of Lord Byron
keen sentiment of injustice underwent a sort of numbness. On seeing
himself thus brutally attacked on the one hand, and so feebly defended
on the other, by lukewarm, pusillanimous friends, he may have questioned
if he were not really in fault, and hesitated, perhaps, how to reply;
for he almost spoke of himself as guilty in the farewell addressed to
his cold-hearted wife, and also in the lines composed for his more
deserving sister. This situation of mind shows itself without disguise,
sadly depicted in the third canto of "Childe Harold." Manfred himself,
that wondrous conception of genius, whose lot was cast amid all the
sublimities of nature, despite his pride and his strength of will, yet
was made to wear the sackcloth of penance. But, on arriving at Venice
when months had rolled on, and the Alps were between him and the
injustice undergone,--after Lady Byron's new, incredible, and strange
refusal to return,--he felt his conscience disencumbered of all morbid
influences. The testimony given, the absolution awarded by this
impartial, incorruptible judge, whom he had never ceased to consult,
became sufficient for him. And by degrees, as he succeeded in
forgetting, so as to have power to forgive, peace and tranquillity
revisited his mind. Venice was the city of his dream; he had known her,
he said, ere he visited her, and after the East she it was that haunted
his imagination. Reality spoiled nothing of his dream; he loved every
thing about her,--the solemn gayety of her gondolas, the silence of her
canals, the late hours of her theatres and soirees, the movement and
animation reigning on St. Mark's, where the gay world nightly assembled.
Even the decay of the town (which saddened him later), harmonizing then
with the whole scene, was not displeasing. He regretted the old costumes
given up; but the Carnival, though waning, still recalled ancient
Venice, and rejoiced his heart. Familiar with the Italian language, he
took pleasure in studying, also, the Venetian dialect, the naivete and
softness of which charmed him, especially on woman's lips. Stretched in
his gondola, he loved to court the breezes of the Adriatic, especially
at twilight and moonlit hours, unrivalled for their splendor in Venice.
In summer and autumn he delighted to give the rein to his horse along
the solitary banks of the Lido, or beside the flower-enamelled borders
of the Brenta. He loved the simplicity of the women, the freedom from
hypocrisy of the men. Feeling himself liked by those among whom chance
or choice had thrown him, frequenting theatres and society that could
both amuse and instruct, though powerless to fill his thoughts, for
these latter required more substantial food, and some hard difficult
study to occupy them, being free from all disquieting passions, and
wishing to remain thus, sociable as he was by temperament, though loving
solitude for the sake of his genius; under all these circumstances, he
could satisfy, in due proportion, the double exigency of his nature; for
he lived, as we have seen, amid a small circle of sympathetic
acquaintances, and of friends arriving from England, who clustered round
him without interfering with the independence he had regained, and which
formed the natural necessary element for his mind; though he had been
deprived of it in England by the cant and pusillanimity of his friends.
If, then, he was not exactly happy at this time, at least he was on the
road leading to happiness. For he was beginning to make progress in the
path of philosophy,--a gentle, indulgent, generous philosophy, as deep
as it was clever and pleasing, and which afterward ruled his life, and
inspired his genius. All those who saw him at this period are unanimous
in saying that melancholy then held aloof from him. In all his letters
we find proof of the same. "Venice and I go on well together," wrote he
to Murray.
And elsewhere,--"I go out a great deal, and am very well pleased."
Mr. Rose, who visited him at Venice, in the spring of 1818, began a poem
which he addressed to him from Albano, where he was taking baths for his
health, by alluding to the gayety which Byron spread around him at the
reunions which he liked.
But while those living near him, and at Venice, where his poetry was not
known, would never have imagined him to be melancholy, in England and
other places where people read the sorrow-breathing creations of his
genius, he continued to be considered the very personification of
melancholy or misanthropy. He knew, and laughed about it sometimes.
"I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my sable, in public
imagination, more particularly since my moral wife demolished my
reputation. However, not that, nor more than that, has yet extinguished
my spirit, which always rises with the rebound."
And as he did not wish to be considered a misanthrope, he added to
Moore, in the same letter:--
"I wish you would also tell Jeffrey what you know,--that I was not, and
indeed, am not, even _now_, the misanthropical and gloomy gentleman for
which he takes me, but a facetious companion, getting on well with those
with whom I am intimate, and as loquacious and laughing as if I were a
much cleverer fellow."
And at the same time, to disabuse the public also, and show that he
could write gayly, he set himself to study a kind of poetry thoroughly
Italian in its spirit, and of which Berni is the father; poetry replete
with wit, and somewhat free, but devoid of malice, even when it merges
from gayety into satire; a style unknown to England in its varied
shades, and which it was easier for him to introduce than to make
popular. "Beppo" was his first essay in this line, and it contains too
much genuine fun not to have been a natural product of his humor ere
flowing from his pen.
On sending it to Murray as a mere sample of the style he thought it
possible to introduce into the literature of his country, he said:--
"At least, this poem will show that I can write gayly, and will repel
the accusation of monotony and affectation."[183]
But the gayety visible at this period in his writings and his conduct
was not, however, uninterrupted. For such cheerfulness to be constant,
neither a continuation of the causes producing it, nor yet the absence
of English papers and reviews could quite suffice. It was necessary that
no letters should come, awakening painful remembrances that had
slumbered awhile, that there should be no necessity for selling his
property in England,--a matter always complicated, and difficult of
execution at a distance, and which forced upon him cares and occupations
most opposed to his character, while affording sad proof of the
negligence, ingratitude, and other faults of those intrusted with the
management of his affairs. It would have required that friends who had
neglected to prevent his departure, should not, when weary of seeing him
no more, have conspired to bring about his return, devising a good means
of so doing by obstacles thrown in the way of a successful issue to his
affairs, which happy conclusion was absolutely necessary for his peace
and independence. We see by his letters, written during the summer of
1818, that he was tormented in a thousand ways; sometimes not receiving
any accounts, sometimes being advised to come nearer London, then,
again, having no tidings of how several thousands had been disposed of.
Besides that, he had constantly before his eyes a spectacle most painful
for a generous heart to witness. That was Venice choked and expiring in
the grip of her foreign rulers. The humiliation thus inflicted on the
city of his dreams, and its noble race of inhabitants, and which was
every instant repeated and proclaimed by the brutal voice of drums and
cannons, with a thousand added vexations (necessary, perhaps, for
keeping up an abhorred sway), caused infinite suffering to his just and
liberal nature, raising emotions of anger and pitying regret, that
flowed from his pen in sublimely indignant language. Thereupon, the
despots, unable to impose silence upon him, revenged themselves in
various ways, echoing reports spread in London, and inventing new
fables, which the idle people of Venice, more idle than elsewhere, and
even the gondoliers repeated in their turn to strangers, to amuse and
gain a few pence. We pass over any details of the persecution inflicted
on him by English tourists, who, not actuated by sympathy, but out of
sheer curiosity and eagerness to pick up all the gossip and idle tales
in circulation, were wont to run after Lord Byron, intruding on his
private walks, and even pressing into his very palace. Such conduct, of
course, displeased him, and accordingly in the summer of 1818 we find
traces of ill-humor visible in his correspondence, and even in the first
two cantos of "Don Juan." Afterward, when he had been laid hold of and
absorbed by a great passion, his irritation merged into sadness,
melancholy, disquietude, and irresolution.[184]
But if all this proves that sadness wearing the garb of melancholy
sometimes approached him, even at Venice; we see too clearly its real
and accidental causes to be able to ascribe it to a permanent and fatal
disposition of temperament.
Many signs of suffering escaped his pen at this time. For instance,
writing to Moore from Venice in 1818, and wishing to give him a
picturesque description of a creature full of savage energy, who forced
herself upon him in a thousand extravagant ways, refusing to leave his
house, he said:--
"I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have preferred
Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, perhaps, wonder at my
speaking thus (making allusion to Lady Byron).... I could have forgiven
the dagger or the bowl, any thing but the _deliberate desolation_ piled
upon me when I stood _alone upon my hearth_ with my household gods
shivered around me.... Do you suppose I have forgotten or forgiven it?
It has comparatively swallowed up in me every other feeling, and I shall
remain only a spectator upon this earth until some great occasion
presents itself, which may come yet. There are others more to be blamed
than----, and it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly."
Meanwhile, until Providence should present him with this opportunity,
another feeling took involuntary possession of his whole soul. But would
not the sentiment which was about to swallow up or transform all others,
and which was at last to bring him some happiness, also destroy the
peace so carefully preserved in his heart by indifference since he left
London? He seemed at first to have dreaded such a result himself; for,
in one of the earliest letters addressed to the person beloved (letters
which fully unveil his beautiful soul, and where one would vainly seek
an indelicate or sensual expression), he tells her "that he had
resolved, on system, to avoid a great passion," but that she had put to
flight all his resolutions, that he is wholly hers, and will become all
she wishes, happy perhaps in her love, but never more at peace,--"_ma
tranquillo mai piu_."
And he ends the letter with a verse quoted from Guarini's "Pastor
Fido."[185]
His heart assuredly was satisfied, but precisely because he truly loved,
and felt himself beloved; therefore did he also suffer from the
impossibility of reconciling the exigencies of his heart with
circumstances. In one of these beautiful letters, so full of simplicity
and refinement, he tells her:--
"What we shall have to suffer is of common occurrence, and we must bear
it like many others, for true love is never happy; but we two shall
suffer still more because we are placed in no ordinary circumstances."
His real sentiments of soul are likewise displayed in that beautiful
satirical poem, "Don Juan," in the third canto of which he exclaims:--