My Recollections of Lord Byron
important accidents in the hero's life? Why, for instance, have
described his childhood as a painful time? Was not Lord Byron surrounded
with the tenderest cares while in Scotland? Had he been unhappy there,
would he have transmitted to us in such happy lines his remembrance of
the time which he spent in the North? Is it not in Scotland that his
heart was nursed with every affection, that his mind drank in the
essence of poetry? Why make his mother die when he was only twelve years
of age, since she died only on his return from Spain and from Greece,
that is, when he was twenty-two? Why make her die of grief at being
abandoned by him, in consequence of an imaginary scene which obliges her
to take refuge in the midst of a band of Bohemian travellers, when it is
known that she died rather by the excess of joy which she experienced at
the thought of seeing him again after an absence of nearly two years?
Why change the ages, and give Miss Chaworth fifteen when she was
eighteen, or himself eighteen when he was fifteen? Why give him such an
affectionate guardian instead of Lord Carlisle? It may be argued that in
these changes in the actual life of Lord Byron, we must only perceive
the genius of the writer, who by making the hero's infancy a sad one,
and causing the first glimpse of happiness to dawn upon him at Cherbury,
in depriving him of his mother at an early age in order that he may live
entirely in the Herbert family, where he finds so much happiness, and
repays it so well, Mr. Disraeli believed that he could bring out in
better relief all the tenderness, kindness, docility, gratitude,
constancy, and those other rare and splendid qualities of his hero's
young soul. In reducing Miss Herbert's years, and in increasing those of
his hero, the author no doubt wished to render forcible the sentiments
which a child of fifteen could not otherwise have inspired in a young
girl of eighteen. The imaginary duel was probably conceived to afford
the author an opportunity of showing his hero under other admirable
aspects, and especially to furnish him with the means of casting blame
upon English society, of absolving him, and of showing how he was the
victim of inherent national prejudices, which time has not yet succeeded
in eradicating.
The exuberance and variety of the gifts which nature had bestowed upon
Byron, together with the universality of his genius, which created in
him such apparently singular contrasts, no doubt inspired Mr. Disraeli
with the idea that to make him better known it was necessary to make two
persons of one, each of a different age, so as to be able to divide his
qualities according to their suitableness to those ages, and to make him
act and speak in accordance with each given character: to show us the
man in his moral, social, and intellectual capacity during his
transition from early youth to a maturer age, after the experience of
those hardships of life which have purified and strengthened his soul.
The first period is represented by the ardent and passionate Lord
Cadurcis, the other by the wise and philosophical Herbert. In making
Herbert live to a mature age, and in centring in him every grace, every
quality, every perfection with which a mortal can be gifted, he wished
to show to what degree of moral perfection Lord Byron might have
attained, and how happy he might have been in the peace and quiet of
domestic life had he been joined to another wife in matrimony, since
notwithstanding Lady Annabel's faults, happiness was not out of
Herbert's reach. The conclusion to which Disraeli no doubt points is
the inward avowal by Lady Annabel herself that she, not Herbert, was the
cause of their separation, and of their useless misfortunes. Again, when
young Lord Cadurcis returns from Greece, and when Disraeli recounts his
conversation with Herbert, his intention, no doubt, was to show us the
intellectual and moral progress which time has caused him to make,--the
transition from the "Childe Harold" of twenty-one to the "Childe Harold"
of "Manfred" of twenty-nine; and from the "Childe Harold" of thirty to
the "Don Juan" and "Sardanapalus" of thirty-three; he thus was able to
put in relief that mobility of character which existed in him as regards
a certain order of ideas, and which blended itself so well with the
depth and the constancy of other of his views, enabling us to penetrate
into the recesses of that beautiful soul, and displaying to our admiring
gaze its numberless springs of action,--at times his constant aspiration
to come to the aid of humanity, and his little hope of succeeding in
modifying our corrupt nature; his love of glory, and how little he cared
for the appreciation of the public of which he had experienced the
fickle favors; his knowledge of life, his simple tastes, his love of
nature, and the greatness of his mind, of which no ambition or worldly
feeling could tarnish the simplicity and even sublimity. In giving him
two individualities the novelist was better able to combine the
passionate sarcasms of Cadurcis with the smiles of goodness and
tolerance of Herbert, and to show him to us as he was wont to converse,
mixing the wittiest remarks with the most serious reflections. He had
made him express a number of opinions apparently contradictory, but
which belonged to his peculiar character, which was equally simple and
complex, alike sensible and passionate, subject to a thousand influences
of weather and seasons; and though inflexible in his principles of honor
as in the whole course of his existence, yet changeable in things of
minor importance. He loves to mystify, and writes, without reflecting as
to the possible consequences, a number of things which cross his mind,
and in which he does not believe, but of which his love of humor forces
the expression to his lips. Again, Disraeli tells us of a number of his
real ideas, initiates us into his literary tastes, his philosophical
views, his preferences, his admiration for the great men of antiquity
and of modern times; tells us why his favorite philosophers are Plato
and Epicurus, his favorite characters in antiquity Alexander and
Alcibiades, both young and handsome conquerors; in modern times, Milton
and Sir Philip Sydney, Bayle and Montaigne; what his opinions respecting
Shakspeare and Pope, what Cadurcis, and what Herbert thinks of these;
and finally he gives us his views upon the love which we should have for
truth, upon the influence which political situations bear upon the
grandeur of country, not only in literature and in arts, but likewise in
philosophy, and in a number of other ways.
All these means employed by the great novelist certainly succeed in
making of "Venetia" a most delightful book; but notwithstanding its
charms, as we read, it is impossible not to ask one's self at times
whether a historical novel is thus entitled to encroach upon the
biography of great men. Without pretending to settle the question, I own
that I rather appreciate the truth of a historical work than all the
pleasure which the talent of an author can afford me, and it appears to
me that if Mr. Disraeli, with his admirable talent, had chosen to write
the life of Lord Byron, he would have done better. We should not, it is
true, have had in the biography either the pleasant life at Cherbury, or
the scene at Newstead, neither the duel nor its consequences; but we
should have had almost a similar Lady Mounteagle, and we should have
seen the rise of that same base spirit in his colleague which greeted
him at one period of his life, the same wickedness which assailed him,
the same jealousy with which he was looked upon, the same cruel
persecution to which he was subjected, the same hatred which assailed
him on the part of the people who had a little before so idolized him,
and, in short, the same reaction in the public mind which actually took
place. We should, on the other hand, have equally seen the same noble
mind, too proud again to submit to the curb under the yoke of popular
public feeling. He would not have shown us a charming Lady Annabel
styled a virtuous woman, though she abandons her husband simply because
she believes he no longer entertains for her all the ardent love which
he had evinced during the honey-moon!--a Lady Annabel, indeed, who
constitutes in herself a being morally impossible, who though she does
abandon her husband, spends her night in bewailing his loss at the foot
of his portrait; who, though she adores her daughter, nearly causes her
death with grief from the fear which she has that the child will not
marry a man of genius like her father. Instead of such a woman we should
have had, if not one more logical in her acts, at least more real and
historical, and exemplifying the painful and murderous effects of
silence in the condemnation of a man against whom the venom of calumny
has been directed--that man being no less a person than her own husband.
Instead of a Lady Annabel repentant at last, and self-accusing, truth
and reality would have presented us with an insensible, hard-hearted,
and inexorable woman, who remains inflexible to the last, and who
deserves that the effects should be applied to her of the words which
Cadurcis, in a moment of despair, pronounces against Venetia's mother,
when the former declares that she is the victim of her mother, but that
nevertheless she will do her duty:
"Then my curse upon your mother's head! May Heaven rain all its plagues
upon her! The Hecate!"
We should not have had a Venetia who is truly a delicious emanation from
a poet's mind, and the only woman worthy of becoming the wife of Lord
Byron, who sums up in herself all the tenderness which he must have
inspired in or felt for a woman, a sister, or a daughter. But we should
have had, instead of her, three persons who really existed, and who
exercised a great influence over Lord Byron's life. The one a young lady
of eighteen, whom Lord Byron styled light and coquettish, but who really
possessed his heart at fifteen years of age; the other his dear Augusta,
who was truly a Venetia toward him; and finally, his beloved little Ada,
for whom he had such a paternal tenderness. Instead of an elderly
Herbert returning to domestic happiness, which would simply have been
impossible with the wife whom Fate had chosen for Lord Byron, we should
have had a handsome young man who has not waited until he had reached
the mature age of Herbert to be adorned with every virtue, in whom
reason is not the effect of growing years, whose wisdom is not that of
the old; and instead of the pathetic catastrophe which is attributed to
Herbert and Cadurcis together, and which really occurred to Shelley, we
should have had Lord Byron's real death, which was infinitely more
pathetic, and could have been described in equally beautiful and
heartrending language. How sublime would have been the history of the
death of that young man who at the age of thirty-four heroically
sacrifices his life for the independence of a country which is not his
own, and whose patriotism is greater than that of his countrymen, since
he prefers the cause of humanity to the interests of the little spot on
the globe where he was born!
If, then, instead of a novel, Mr. Disraeli had given us a true history,
the work would have been an everlasting monument erected to the memory
of two noble beings, and would have been transmitted to posterity as a
valuable testimony of the virtues of Lord Byron.
As the book stands, and written by such a man as Mr. Disraeli, it will
ever remain a study worthy of being quoted among those whose object it
is to proclaim the truth respecting Lord Byron.
PARIS, _November, 1868_.
THE END.
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