My Recollections of Lord Byron
MATTHEWS.
"Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Matthews," says Moore, "I
have already had occasion to speak; but the high station which he held
in Lord Byron's affection and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler
tribute to his memory.
"There have seldom, perhaps, started together in life so many youths of
high promise and hope as were to be found among the society of which
Lord Byron formed a part at Cambridge. Among all these young men of
learning and talent, the superiority in almost every department of
intellect seems to have been, by the ready consent of all, awarded to
Matthews.... Young Matthews appears--in spite of some little asperities
of temper and manner, which he was already beginning to soften down when
snatched away--to have been one of those rare individuals who, while
they command deference, can at the same time win regard, and who, as it
were, relieve the intense feeling of admiration which they excite by
blending it with love."
Matthews died while bathing in the Cam.
On the 7th of September, 1811, Byron wrote to Dallas as
follows:--"Matthews, Hobhouse, Davies, and myself, formed a coterie of
our own at Cambridge and elsewhere.... Davies, who is not a scribbler,
has always beaten us all in the war of words. H---- and myself always
had the worst of it with the other two, and even M---- yielded to the
dashing vivacity of S. D----."
And in another letter:--"You did not know M----: he was a man of the
most astonishing powers."
And again, speaking of his death to Mr. Hodgson, he writes:--
"You will feel for poor Hobhouse; Matthews was the god of his idolatry:
and if intellect could exalt a man above his fellows, no one would
refuse him pre-eminence."
Matthews died at the time when he was offering himself to compete for a
lucrative and honorable position in the University. As soon as his death
was known, it was said that if the highest talents could be sure of
success, if the strictest principles of honor, and the devotion to him
of a multitude of friends could have assured it, his dream would have
been realized.
Besides a great superiority of intellect, Matthews was gifted with a
very amusing originality of thought, which, joined to a very keen sense
of the ridiculous, exercised a kind of irresistible fascination. Lord
Byron, who loved a joke better than any one, took great pleasure in all
the amusing eccentricities of him who was styled the Dean of Newstead;
while Byron had been christened by him the Abbot of that place.
Shortly before his death, in 1821, Byron wrote a very amusing letter
from Ravenna to Murray, recalling a host of anecdotes relating to
Matthews, and which well set forth the clever eccentricity of the man
for whom Byron professed so much esteem and admiration.
SCROOPE DAVIES.
We have already seen what Byron thought of Davies. His cleverness, his
great vivacity, and his gayety, were great resources to Byron in his
moments of affliction. When, in 1811, Byron experienced the bitterest
loss of his life--that of his mother--he wrote from Newstead to beg that
Davies would come and console him.
Shortly after, he wrote to Hodgson to say, "Davies has been here. His
gayety, which death itself can not change, has been of great service to
me: but it must be allowed that our laughter was very false."
We must not forget to mention, among the friends of Byron, William
Banks, Mr. Pigott, of Southwell, and Mr. Hodgson, a writer of great
merit, who was one of his companions at Newstead, and with whom he
corresponded even during his voyage in the East. For all these he
maintained throughout life the kindest remembrance, as also for Mr.
Beecher, for whom he entertained a regard equal to his affection. Mr.
Beecher having disapproved of the moral tendency of his early poems,
Lord Byron destroyed in one night the whole of the first edition of
those poems, in order to prove his sense of esteem for Mr. Beecher's
opinion. In the same category we should place Lord Byron's friendship
for Dr. Drury, his tutor at Harrow; but this latter friendship is so
marked with feelings of respect, veneration, and gratitude, that I had
rather speak of it later, when I shall treat of the last-named quality,
as one of the most noticeable in Lord Byron's character.
GRIEF WHICH HE EXPERIENCED AT THE LOSS OF HIS FRIENDS.
The grief which the loss of his friends occasioned to him was
proportioned to the degree of affection which he entertained for them.
By a curious fatality he had the misfortune to lose at an early age,
almost all those he loved. This grief reached its climax on his return
from his first travels.
"If," says Moore, "to be able to depict powerfully the painful emotions
it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, in other words, if,
for the poet to be great, the man must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be
owned, paid early this dear price of mastery. In the short space of one
month," he says in a note on Childe Harold, "I have lost her who gave me
being, and most of those who made that being tolerable." Of these young
Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list of his Harrow favorites,
died of a fever at Coimbra; and Matthews, the idol of his admiration at
Cambridge, was drowned while bathing in the Cam. The following letter,
written shortly after, shows so powerful a feeling of regret, and
displays such real grief, that it is almost painful to peruse it:
"MY DEAREST DAVIES,--Some curse hangs over me and mine. My mother lies a
corpse in this house; one of my best friends is drowned in a ditch. What
can I say, or think, or do? My dear Scroope, if you can spare a moment,
do come down to me; I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was written
on Friday; on Saturday he was not. In ability who was like Matthews?
Come to me; I am almost desolate; left almost alone in the world. I had
but you and H---- and M----, and let me enjoy the survivors while I
can."
Writing to Dallas on the first of August, he says:--
"Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than one who made that
being tolerable. Matthews, a man of the first talents, has perished
miserably in the muddy waves of the Cam; my poor school-fellow
Wingfield, at Coimbra, within a month: and while I had heard from all
three, but not seen one. But let this pass; we shall all one day pass
along with the rest; the world is too full of such things, and our very
sorrow is selfish."
To Hodgson he writes:--
"Indeed, the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid
from the shock; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh
at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake, did not
every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary.
"You will write to me? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude irksome
before."
Some months later he heard of the death of his friend Eddleston, of
which he wrote to Dallas in the following terms:
"I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost one very dear to
me in happier times. But 'I have almost forgot the taste of grief,' and
'supped full of horrors' till I have become callous, nor have I a tear
left for an event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head
to the earth. It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the
greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I shall be left a
lonely tree before I am withered."
On that same day, 11th of October, when his mind was a prey to such
grief, he received a letter from Hodgson, advising him to banish all
cares and to find in pleasure the distraction he needed. Lord Byron
replied by some lines which Moore has reproduced; but the last of which
he omitted to give, and which were written only to mystify the excellent
Mr. Hodgson, who always looked at every thing and every one in a bright
light, and whom Byron wished to frighten.
Here are the first lines:--
"Oh! banish care, such ever be
The motto of _thy_ revelry!
Perchance of _mine_ when wassail nights
Renew those riotous delights,
Wherewith the children of Despair
Lull the lone heart, and 'banish care,'
But not in morn's reflecting hour."
Two days after replying in verse, he answered him in prose.
"I am growing nervous--it is really true--really, wretchedly,
ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, write, nor
amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and my nights
restless."
The same day, 11th October, 1811, one of the darkest in his life, he
wrote also his first stanza, addressed to Thyrza, of which the pathetic
charm seems to rise to the highest pitch.
"To no other but an imaginary being," says Moore, "could he have
addressed such tender and melancholy poetical lines."
BYRON'S FRIENDSHIP FOR MOORE.
At this time of his life, whether from the numerous injuries inflicted
on him by men and by fate, or from some other circumstance, Byron seemed
to be less given to friendships than formerly. He felt the force of
friendship as deeply as before, but he became less expansive. Death, in
taking so many of his friends away from him, had endeared those who
remained still more to his heart, and caused him to seek among these the
consolation he wanted. It is not true to say that Lord Byron was left
alone entirely, at any time of his life: quite the contrary, he at all
times lived in the midst of friends more or less devoted to him. Dallas
and Moore pretend that there was a time in his early youth when he had
no friends at all; but this time can not be stated, unless one forgets
the names of Hobhouse, Hodgson, Harness, Clare, and many others who
never lost sight of him, and unless one forgets the life of devotion
which he led at Southwell and at Newstead both before and after his
travels in the East.
Dallas and Moore, in speaking of this momentary isolation, in all
probability adopted a common prejudice which causes them to believe that
a lord must ever be lonely unless he is surrounded by a circle of rich
and fashionable companions. The truth is that Byron, having left England
immediately on quitting college, only had college connections, with all
of whom he renewed his friendship on his return to the mother-country.
But it is equally true, and this is to his credit, that he long
hesitated to replace departed friends by new ones.
To conquer this repugnance he required a very high degree of esteem for
the friend he was about to make, a similarity of tastes, and above all
a sympathy based upon real goodness. This was the time of his greatest
mental depression. It preceded that splendid epoch in his life, when his
star shone with such brilliancy in the literary sphere, thanks to
"Childe Harold," and in the world of politics through his parliamentary
successes, which had earned for him the praises of the whole nation.
Then did friends present themselves in scores, but out of these few were
chosen.
Among the great men of the day who surrounded him, he took to several,
and in particular to Lord Holland, a Whig like himself, and a man
equally distinguished for the excellence of his heart as for his rare
intellect. Lord Holland's hospitality was the pride of England. Byron
also conceived a liking for Lord Lansdowne,--the model of every virtue,
social and domestic; for Lord Dudley, whose wit so charmed him; for Mr.
Douglas Kinnaird, brother to Lord Kinnaird, whom Byron called his most
devoted friend in politics and in literature; for all those first
notabilities of the day, Rogers, Sheridan, Curran, Mackintosh, for all
of whom he may be said to have entertained a feeling akin to friendship.
But all these were friends of the moment; friends whom the relations of
every-day life in the world of fashion had brought together, and whose
talents exacted admiration, and hence he formed ties which may be styled