My Recollections of Lord Byron
life and love, he was satisfied with the knowledge that he was young,
handsome, beloved, and admired. Then it was that his beauty became, as
it were, radiant and brilliant like a ray of sunshine.
The time to see him was when, under the influence of genius, his soul
was tormented with the desire of pouring out the numberless ideas and
thoughts which flooded his mind: at such moments one scarcely dared
approach him, awed, as it were, by the feeling of one's own nothingness
in comparison with his greatness. Again, the time to see him was when,
coming down from the high regions to which a moment before he had
soared, he became once more the simple child adorned with goodness and
every grace; taking an interest in all things, as if he were really a
child. It was impossible then to refrain from the contemplation of this
placid beauty, which, without taking away in the least from the
admiration which it inspired, drew one toward him, and made him more
accessible to one, and more familiar by lessening a little the distance
which separated one from him. But, above all, he should have been seen
during the last days of his stay in Italy, when his soul had to sustain
the most cruel blows; when heroism got the better of his affections, of
his worldly interests, and even of his love of ease and tranquillity;
when his health, already shaken, appeared to fail him each day more and
more, to the loss of his intellectual powers. Had one seen him then as
we saw him, it would scarcely have been possible to paint him as he
looked. Does not genius require genius to be its interpreter?
Thorwaldsen alone has, in his marble bust of him, been able to blend the
regular beauty of his features with the sublime expression of his
countenance. Had the reader seen him, he would have exclaimed with Sir
Walter Scott, "that no picture is like him."
Not only would he have observed in his handsome face the denial of all
the absurd statements which had been made about him, but he would have
noticed a soul greater even than the mind, and superior to the acts
which he performed on this earth; he would have read in unmistakable
characters, not only what he was,--a good man,--but the promise of a
moral and intellectual perfection ever increasing. If this progressive
march toward perfection was at one time arrested by the trials of his
life, and by the consequences of undeserved sorrow, it was well proved
by his whole conduct toward the end of his life, and in the last poems
which he wrote. His poems from year to year assumed a more perfect
beauty, and increased constantly, not only in the splendor of their
conception, but also in the force of their expressions, and their moral
tendency, visible especially in his dramas. In them will be found types
surpassing in purity, in delicacy, in grandeur, in heroism, without ever
being untrue to nature, all that ever was conceived by the best poets of
England. Shakspeare, in all his master creations, has not conceived a
more noble soul than that of Angiolina, or a more tender one than
Marina's or even one more heroic than Myrrha's. As his genius became
developed, his soul became purified and more perfect. But the Almighty,
who does not allow perfection to be of this world, did not permit him to
remain on earth, when once he had reached that point. He allowed him,
however,--and this perhaps as a compensation for all the injuries which
he had suffered,--to die in the prime of life a death worthy of him; the
death of a virtuous man, of a hero, of a philosopher.
Excuse this long letter, for if I have ventured to speak to you at such
length of the moral, and--may I say the word?--"physical" beauty of the
illustrious Englishman, it is because one genius can appreciate another,
and that, in speaking of so great a man as Lord Byron, there is no fear
of tiring the listeners.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Among the bad portraits of Lord Byron spread over the
world, there is one that surpasses all others in ugliness, which is
often put up for sale, and which a mercantile spirit wishes to pass off
for a good likeness; it was done by an American, Mr. West,--an excellent
man, but a very bad painter. This portrait, which America requested to
have taken, and which Lord Byron consented to sit for, was begun at
Montenero, near Leghorn; but Lord Byron, being obliged to leave
Montenero suddenly, could only give Mr. West two or three sittings. It
was then finished from memory, and far from being at all like Lord
Byron, is a frightful caricature, which his family or friends ought to
destroy.]
[Footnote 8: Moore. vol. ii. p. 248.]
[Footnote 9: Miss E. Smith.]
CHAPTER III.
FRENCH PORTRAIT.
"I see that the greater part of the men of my time endeavor to
blemish the glory of the generous and fine actions of olden days by
giving to them some vile interpretation, or by finding some vain
cause or occasion which produced them--very clever, indeed! I shall
use a similar license, and take the same trouble to endeavor to
raise these great names."--MONTAIGNE, chap. "Glory."
The portrait of Lord Byron, in a moral point of view, is still to be
drawn. Many causes have conspired to make the task difficult, and the
portrait unlike. Physically speaking, on account of his matchless
beauty--mentally, owing to his genius--and morally, owing to the rare
qualities of his soul, Lord Byron was certainly a phenomenon. The world
agrees in this opinion; but is not yet agreed upon the nature and moral
value of the phenomenon. But as all phenomena have, besides a primary
and extraordinary cause, some secondary and accidental causes, which it
is necessary to examine in order that they may be understood; so, to
explain Byron's nature, we must not neglect to observe the causes which
have contributed chiefly to the formation of his individuality.
His biographers have rather considered the results than the causes.
Even Moore, the best among them, if not, indeed, the only one who can
claim the title of biographer, grants that the nature of Lord Byron and
its operations were inexplicable, but does not give himself the trouble
to understand them.
Here are his own words:--"So various indeed, and contradictory were his
attributes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced to
have been not one, but many: nor would it be any great exaggeration of
the truth to say, that out of the mere partition of the properties of
his single mind, a plurality of characters, all different and all
vigorous, might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect
exhibited by him that led the world, during his short, wondrous career,
to compare him with the medley host of personages, almost all differing
from each other, which he playfully enumerates in one of his journals.
"The object of so many contradictory comparisons must probably be like
something different from them all; but what _that_ is, is more than I
know, or any body else."
But, while merely explaining the extraordinary richness of this nature
by the analysis of its results, by his changeable character, by the
frankness which ever made his heart speak that which it felt, by his
excessive sensitiveness, which made him the slave of momentary
impressions, by his almost childlike delight and astonishment at things,
Moore does not arrive at the true causes of the phenomenon. He
registers, it is true, certain effects which become causes when they
draw upon the head of Lord Byron certain false judgments, and open the
door to every calumny.
Without adopting the system of the influence of races on mankind--which,
if pushed to its extreme consequences, must lead to the disastrous and
deplorable doctrine of fatalism, and would make of man a mere
machine--it is, however, impossible to deny that races and their
amalgamation do exercise a great influence over our species.
It is to this very influence of race, which was so evident in Lord
Byron, that we attribute, in a measure, the exceptional nature of the
great English poet.
As the reader knows, Lord Byron was descended, by his father, from the
noble race of the Birons of France. His ancestors accompanied William
the Conqueror to England, aided him in the conquest of that country, and
distinguished themselves in the various fields of battle which
ultimately led to the total subjugation of the island.
In his family, the sympathies of the original race always remained
strong.
His father, a youthful and brilliant officer, was never happy except in
France. He was very intimate with the Marechal de Biron, who looked upon
him as a connection. He even settled in Paris with his first wife, the
Marchioness of Carmarthen. Soon after his second marriage, he brought
his wife over to France, and it was in France that she conceived the
future poet. When obliged to return to England to be confined, she was
so far advanced in pregnancy that she could not reach London in time,
but gave birth to Lord Byron at Dover. It was in France that Byron's
father died at thirty-five years of age. Through his mother--a Scotch
lady connected with the royal house of Stuart--he had Scotch blood in
his veins.
The powerful influence exercised by the Norman Conquest, in the
modification of all the old habits of Great Britain, and in making the
English that which they now are, has descended as an heirloom to some
old aristocratic families of the kingdom, where it discovers itself at
different times in different individuals. Nowhere, perhaps, did this
influence show itself more clearly than in the person of Lord Byron.
His duplicate or triplicate origin was already visible in the cast of
his features. Without any analogy to the type of beauty belonging to the
men of his country (a beauty seldom found apart from a kind of cold
reserve), Lord Byron's beauty appeared to unite the energy of the
western with the splendor and the mildness of the southern climes.
The influence of this mixture of races was equally visible in his moral
and intellectual character.
He belonged to the Gallic race (modified by the Latin and Celtic
elements) by his vivacity and mobility of character, as well as by his
wit and his keen appreciation of the ridiculous, by those smiles and
sarcasms which hide or discover a profound philosophy, by his perception
of humor without malice, by all those amiable qualities which in the
daily intercourse of life made of him a being of such irresistible
attraction. He belonged to that race likewise by his great
sensitiveness, by his expansive good-nature, by his politeness, by his
tractableness, by his universal character which rendered every species
of success easy to him; by his great generosity, by his love of glory,
by his passion for honor, his intuitive perception of great deeds, by a
courage which might have appeared rash, had it not been heroic, and
which, in presence of the greatest perils and even of death, ever
preserved for him that serenity of mind which allowed him to laugh, even
at such times; by his energy, and also by his numerous mental and bodily
requirements; and by his defects,--which were, a slight tendency to
indiscretion, a want of prudence injurious to his interests,
impatience, and a kind of intermittent and apparent fickleness.
He belonged to the western race by his vast intellect, by his practical
common sense, which formed the basis of his intellect, and which never
allowed him to divorce sublime conceptions from sound sense and good
reason,--two qualities, in fact, which so governed his imagination as to
make people say he had not any; by the depth of his feelings, the extent
of his learning, his passion for independence, his contempt of death,
his thirst for the infinite, and by that kind of melancholy which seemed
to follow him into the midst of every pleasure. All these various