My Recollections of Lord Byron
sirocco and falling rain cease to act on his nerves, as he himself
acknowledged, but his genius would start into fresh life, making him
snatch a pen, and write off in a few days admirable poems,[188] worthy
to be the fruit of long years of meditation.
We may, then, believe that if his melancholy had been left solely to the
physical and moral influences surrounding him at this time, it would
never have become much developed, or at least would have soon passed
away, like morning mists that rise in the east to be quickly dissipated
by the rays of the sun.
But just as these slight vapors may form into a cloud, if winds arise in
another part of the sky, bringing fresh moisture to them, so a slight
and fugitive sadness in him might be deepened and prolonged through
circumstances. And this was exactly what happened in the year of which
we speak, for it was full of disappointments and grief for him. To
arrive at this persuasion, it is sufficient to remark the coincidence of
dates. For example, we find in his memoranda, under the date of 18th of
January, 1821:--
"At eight proposed to go out. Lega came in with a letter about a bill
_unpaid_ at Venice, which I thought paid months ago. I flew into a
paroxysm of rage, which almost made me faint. I have not been well ever
since. I deserve it for being such a fool--but it _was_ provoking--a set
of scoundrels! It is, however, but five-and-twenty pounds."
Then, again, on the 19th we find:--
"Rode. Winter's wind somewhat more unkind than ingratitude itself,
though Shakspeare says otherwise. At least I am so much more accustomed
to meet with ingratitude than the north wind, that I thought the latter
the sharper of the two. I had met with both in the course of twenty-four
hours, so could judge."
And on the same day he wrote to Murray a letter, in which, after
mentioning a host of vexations and worries, he ends by saying:--
"I am in bad humor--some obstructions in business with those plaguing
trustees, who object to an advantageous loan, which I was to furnish to
a nobleman (Lord B----) on mortgage, because his property is in Ireland,
have shown me how a man is treated in his absence."
Between the 19th and the 22d, his physical and moral indisposition
seemed to last; for he makes reflections in his memoranda, upon
melancholy bilious people, and says that he has not even sufficient
energy to go on with his tragedy of "Sardanapalus," and that he has
ceased composing for the last few days. Now, it was precisely the 20th
that he was more than ever annoyed by the obstinacy of the London
Theatre managers, for, despite his determination and his clear right,
his protestations and entreaties, they were resolved, said the
newspapers that came to hand, on having "Marino Faliero" acted. He had
already written to Murray:--
"I must really and seriously request that you will beg of Messrs. Harris
or Elliston to let the Doge alone: it is not an acting play; it will not
serve their purpose; it will destroy yours (the sale); and it will
distress me. It is not courteous, it is hardly even gentlemanly, to
persist in this appropriation of a man's writings to their
mountebanks."
He wrote thus, on the 19th; but on the 20th his fears had increased to
such a pitch that he also addressed the lord-chamberlain, requesting him
to forbid this representation. Indeed, so great was his annoyance, that
he wrote to Murray twice in the same day:--
"I wish you would speak to Lord Holland, and to all my friends and
yours, to interest themselves in preventing this cursed attempt at
representation.
"God help me! at this distance, I am treated like a corpse or a fool by
the few people that I thought I could rely upon; and I _was_ a fool to
think any better of them than of the rest of mankind."
On the 21st his melancholy does not appear to have worn off. This is to
be attributed to the additions to all the causes of the previous day;
and to the news of the illness of Moore, whom he loved so much, there
came, in addition, the following event, which we give in his own
words:--
"To-morrow is my birthday--that is to say, at twelve o' the clock,
midnight--_i.e._, in twelve minutes, I shall have completed thirty-three
years of age!!! and I go to my bed with a heaviness of heart at having
lived so long, and to so little purpose."
Let me be allowed here to make some comment on the beauty of the
sentiment causing this sadness; for certainly he was not actuated by a
common sensual, selfish regret at youth departing. Beauty, youth, love,
fortune, and celebrity, all smiled on him then; he possessed every one
of them to a degree capable of satisfying any vanity, or any pride, but
they were inadequate, for a modesty so rare and so admirable as his! His
regrets certainly did not apply to youth; he was only thirty-three years
of age! Nor yet to beauty, for he possessed it in the highest degree;
nor to fame, that had only too much been his; nor to love, for he was
the object of real idolatry;[189] nor to any actions that called for
repentance. To what, then, did they apply? To his _aspirations_ after
greater things, after _ideal perfections_, that neither he nor any one
else can arrive at here below. It was a soaring after the infinite!
The cause, noble in itself, of this sadness consisted then in a sort of
nostalgia for the great, the beautiful, the good. The simple words in
which he expressed it enable us to well understand its nature. "I do not
regret this year," said he, "_for what I have done, but for what I have
not done_!"
I will not further multiply proofs; suffice it to say, that this year
having been one of incessant annoyances to him, not only can not we be
surprised that he should have experienced moments of sadness, but we
might rather be astonished at their being so few, if we did not know
that living above all for heart, and his heart being then satisfied, he
found therein compensation for all the rest. "Thanks for your
compliments of the year. I hope that it will be pleasanter than the
last. I speak with reference to England only, as far as regards myself,
where I had every kind of disappointment--lost an important lawsuit--and
the trustees of Lady Byron refusing to allow of an advantageous loan to
be made from my property to Lord Blessington, etc., by way of closing
the four seasons. These, and a hundred other such things, made a year of
bitter business for me in England. Luckily things were a little
pleasanter for me here, else I should have taken the liberty of
Hannibal's ring."
The political and revolutionary events then taking place in Romagna and
throughout Italy, caused emotions and sentiments of too strong a nature
in Lord Byron to be confounded with sadness; but they may well have
contributed to develop largely certain melancholy inclinations
discoverable toward autumn. By degrees, as the first strength of grief
passes away, it leaves behind a sort of melancholy current in the soul,
which, without being the sentiment itself, serves as a conductor for it,
making it gush forth on occurrence of the smallest cause. Causes with
him were not so slight at this period, although he considered them
such[190] out of the superabundance of his philosophical spirit; and the
year that began with so many contradictions, ended in the same manner.
The hope of seeing the Counts Gamba back again at Ravenna was daily
lessening. All the letters Madame G---- wrote to him from Florence and
Pisa, penned as they were amid the anguish of fear lest Lord Byron
should be assassinated at Ravenna, were necessarily pregnant with alarm
and affliction.
Meanwhile his interests were being neglected in London. Murray irritated
him by his inexplicable negligence or worried him with sending foolish
publications and provoking reviews. Gifford, a critic he loved and
revered, from whom no praise, he said, could compensate for any
blame,--Gifford, whose ideas on the drama were quite opposite to his
own, had just been censuring his beautiful dramatic compositions.[191]
Moreover, Italy having failed in her attempts at independence, was
insulted in her misfortune by that world which smiles only on success,
and thus, indirectly, the persons loved and esteemed by Lord Byron came
in for their share of outrage. And all these contradictions, _where_ and
_when_ did he experience them? At Ravenna, in a solitude and isolation
that would have made the bravest stoic shudder, and that was prejudicial
to him without his being aware of it. For there were two distinct
temperaments in Lord Byron, that of his genius and that of his humanity,
and the wants of one were not always those of the other. The first, from
its nature and manifestations, required solitude. The second, eminently
sociable, while yielding to the tyranny of the first, or bearing it from
force of circumstance, suffered nevertheless when solitude became too
complete. It was not the society of the great world, nor what are called
its pleasures, that Lord Byron required; but a society of friends and
clever persons capable of affording a little diversion to his monotonous
life. When this twofold want did not meet with reasonable satisfaction,
a certain degree of melancholy necessarily developed itself. "_When he
was not thrown into some unbearable sort of solitude, like that in which
he found himself at Ravenna_," says Madame G----," _his good-humor and
gayety only varied when letters from England came to move and agitate
him, or when he suffered morally_.
"_I must, however, add that all sensitive agents, all atmospherical
impressions, acted on him more than on others, and it might almost be
said that his sky was mirrored in his soul, the latter often taking its
color from the former; and if by that is understood the hereditary
malady spoken of by others and himself, then they are right, for he had
truly inherited a most impressionable temperament._"
Moreover, the absolute, inexorable solitude caused by the absence of all
his friends from Ravenna, was still further augmented by the occurrence
of intermittent marshy fevers, which every body endeavors to avoid by
flying from Ravenna at the close of summer, and to which he fell a prey.
This fever, that seized hold of him, and even prevented his departure,
might alone have sufficed to render him melancholy, for nothing more
inclines to sadness. But so intimate was his persuasion that when
sadness does not proceed from the heart it has no cause for existence,
and so little was he occupied with self, that he would not allow there
could be sufficient cause for melancholy in all the sufferings weighing
upon him.
"I ride, I am not intemperate in eating or drinking, and my general
health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than
not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to
depress me to that degree."[192]
But so little was it the necessary product of his temperament alone, so
much, on the contrary, did it result from a host of causes accidentally
united, that he had scarcely arrived at Pisa, where most of the causes
either ceased or were neutralized, than his mind recovered its serenity,
and he could write to Moore:--
"At present, owing to the climate (I can walk down into my garden and
pluck my own oranges, indulging in this meridian luxury of
proprietorship), my spirits are much better."
Whenever, then, his heart was happy in the happiness of those he loved,
wherever he found an intellectual society to animate the mind, diverting
and amusing him without imposing the chains of etiquette, we vainly seek
the faintest trace of melancholy. But two great griefs soon befell him
at Pisa, for sorrow never made long truces with Byron. Truly might we
say that fate ceased not from making him pay for the privilege of his