My Recollections of Lord Byron
friendship, provided the strict sense of that word is not understood.
Byron felt this more than any one.
One man, however, contrived to get such a hold on his mind and heart,
that he became truly his friend, and exercised a salutary influence over
him. This man, who contributed to dispel the dark clouds which hung over
Byron's mind, and was the first to charm him in his new life of fashion,
was no other than Thomas Moore.
This new intimacy had not, it is true, the freshness of his early
friendships, formed, as these were, in the freshness of a young heart,
and therefore without any worldly calculations. Moore was even ten years
his senior. But his affection for Moore, founded as it was upon a
similarity of tastes, upon mutual reminiscences, esteem and admiration,
soon developed itself into a friendship which never changed. The
circumstances under which Byron and Moore became friends speak too
highly for the credit of both not to be mentioned here, and we must
therefore say a few words on the subject.
Byron, as the reader knows, had in his famous satire of "English Bards,"
etc., attacked the poems of Moore as having an immoral tendency. Instead
of interpreting the beautiful Irish melodies in their figurative sense,
Byron had taken the direct sense conveyed in their love-inspiring words,
and considered them as likely to produce effeminate and unhealthy
impressions.
"Who in soft guise, surrounded by a choir
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire,
With sparkling eyes, and cheek by passion flush'd,
Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush'd?
'Tis Little! young Catullus of his day,
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay!
* * * * * * *
Yet kind to youth,...
She bids thee 'mend thy line and sin no more.'"
Lord Byron was always of opinion that literature, when it tends to exalt
the more tender sentiments of our nature, pure as these may be, is ever
injurious to the preservation of those manly and energetic qualities
which are so essential for the accomplishment of a noble mission here
below. This opinion is illustrated by the occasional extreme energy of
his heroes, and by his repugnance to introduce love into his dramas. If
this reproach offended Moore a little, Lord Byron's allusion to his duel
with Jeffrey at Chalk Farm in 1806, where it was said that the pistols
of each were not loaded, must have wounded him still more, and he wrote
a letter to Lord Byron which must, it would seem, have brought on a
duel.
Lord Byron was then travelling in the Levant, and the letter remained
with his agent in London. It was only two years after, on his return
from his travels, that he received it. An exchange of letters with Moore
took place, and such was the "good sense, self-possession and frankness"
of Byron's conduct in the matter, that Moore was quite pacified, and all
chances of a duel disappeared with the reconciliation of both, at the
request of each.
The reconciliation took place under the auspices of Rogers, and at a
dinner given by the latter for that purpose. After speaking of his
extraordinary beauty, and of the delicacy and prudence of his conduct,
Moore, in referring to this dinner, ends by saying, "Such did I find
Lord Byron on my first experience of him, and such, so open and
manly-minded did I find him to the last."
Byron, too, was influenced by the charm of Moore's acquaintance, and so
dear to him became the latter's society through that kind of electric
current which appears to run through some people and forms between them
an unbounded sympathy, that it actually succeeded in dispelling the
sombre ideas which then possessed his soul.
Their similarity of tastes, and at the same time those differences of
character which are so essential to the development of the intellect of
two sympathetic minds, were admirably adapted to form the charm which
existed in their relations with one another.
This sympathy, however, would never have found a place in the mind of
Lord Byron had it not sprung from his heart. Amiability was essential in
his friends before he could love them; and though Moore had not that
quality in its highest degree, still he had it sufficiently for Lord
Byron to say in one of his notes, "I have received the most amiable
letter possible from Moore. I really think him the most kind-hearted man
I ever met. Besides which, his talents are equal to his sentiments."
His sympathy for Moore was such that the mention of his name was enough
to awaken his spirits and give him joy. This is palpable in his letters
to Moore, which are masterpieces of talent.
His cordial friendship for Moore was never once affected by the series
of triumphs which followed its formation, and which made the whole world
bow before his genius. "The new scenes which opened before him with his
successes," says Moore, "far from detaching us from one another,
multiplied, on the contrary, the opportunities of meeting each other,
and thereby strengthening our intimacy."
This excessive liking for Moore was kept up by all the force which
constancy lends to affection. One of Byron's most remarkable qualities
was great constancy in his likes, tastes, and a particular attachment to
the recollections of his childhood. At the age of fifteen, Moore's
"Melodies" already delighted him. "I have just been looking over Little
Moore's Melodies, which I knew by heart at fifteen." In 1803 he wrote
from Ravenna: "Hum! I really believe that all the bad things I ever
wrote or did are attributable to that rascally book."
We have seen that at Southwell he used even to ask Miss Chaworth and
Miss Pigott to sing him songs of Moore. At Cambridge, what reconciled
him to leaving Harrow were the hours which he spent with his beloved
Edward Long, with whom he used to read Moore's poetry after having
listened to Long's music.
He already then had a sympathy for Moore, and a wish to know him. The
latter's place was therefore already marked out in Byron's heart, even
before he was fortunate enough to know him.
Moore's straitened means often obliged him to leave London. Then Byron
was seized with a fit of melancholy.
"I might be sentimental to-day, but I won't," he said. "The truth is
that I have done all I can since I am in this world to harden my heart,
and have not yet succeeded, though there is a good chance of my doing
so.
"I wish your line and mine were a little less parallel, they might
occasionally meet, which they do not now.
"I am sometimes inclined to write that I am ill, so as to see you arrive
in London, where no one was ever so happy to see you as I am, and where
there is no one I would sooner seek consolation from, were I ill."
Then, according to his habitual custom of ever depreciating himself
morally, he writes to Moore, in answer to the latter's compliments about
his goodness: "But they say the devil is amusing when pleased, and I
must have been more venomous than the old serpent, to have hissed or
stung in your company."
His sympathy for Moore went so far as to induce him to believe that he
was capable of every thing that is good.
"Moore," says he, in his memoranda of 1813, "has a reunion of
exceptional talents--poetry, music, voice, he has all--and an expression
of countenance such as no one will ever have.
"What humor in his poet's bag! There is nothing that Moore can not do if
he wishes.
"He has but one fault, which I mourn every day--he is not here."
He even liked to attribute to Moore successes which the latter only owed
to himself. Byron had, as the reader knows, the most musical of voices.
Once heard, it could not be forgotten.[26] He had never learned music,
but his ear was so just, that when he hummed a tune his voice was so
touching as to move one to tears.
"Not a day passes," he wrote to Moore, "that I don't think and speak of
you. You can not doubt my sincere admiration, waiving personal
friendship for the present. I have you by rote and by heart, of which
_ecce signum_."
He then goes on to tell him his adventure when at Lady O----'s:--
"I have a habit of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 'Oh, breathe
not,' and others; they are my matins and vespers. I did not intend them
to be overheard, but one morning in comes not la Donna, but il Marita,
with a very grave face, and said, 'Byron, I must request you not to sing
any more, at least of those songs.'--'Why?'--'They make my wife cry, and
so melancholy that I wish her to hear no more of them.'
"Now, my dear Moore, the effect must have been from your words, and
certainly not my music."
To give Moore the benefit of effecting a great success with an Oriental
poem, Byron gave up his own idea of writing one, and sent him some
Turkish books.
"I have been thinking of a story," says he, "grafted on the amours of a
Peri and a mortal, something like Cayotte's 'Diable Amoureux.'
Tenderness is not my _forte_; for that reason I have given up the idea,
but I think it a subject you might make much of."
Moore actually wished to write a poem on an Oriental subject, but
dreaded such a rival as Byron, and expressed his fears in writing to
him. Byron replied:--
"Your Peri, my dear Moore, is sacred and inviolable. I have no idea of
touching the hem of her petticoat. Your affectation of a dislike to
encounter me is so flattering that I begin to think myself a very fine
fellow. But it really puts me out of humor to hear you talk thus."
Not only did Byron encourage Moore in his task, but effaced himself
completely in order to make room for him.
When he published the "Bride of Abydos," Moore remarked that there
existed some connection in that poem with an incident he had to
introduce in his own poem of "Lalla Rookh." He wrote thereupon to Byron
to say that he would stop his own work, because to aspire after him to
describe the energy of passion would be the work of a Caesar.
Byron replied:--
"I see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange diffidence of
your own powers, which I can not account for, and which must be
unaccountable when a Cossack like me can appall a cuirassier.
"Go on--I shall really be very unhappy if I at all interfere with you.
The success of mine is yet problematical ... Come out, screw your
courage to the sticking-place--no man stands higher, whatever you may
think on a rainy day in your provincial retreat."
To Moore he dedicated his "Corsair," and to read the preface is to see
how sincerely attached Byron was to his friend.
When at Venice he heard of some domestic affliction which had befallen
Moore; he wrote to him with that admirable simplicity of style which can
not be imitated, because the true accents of the heart defy imitation.
"Your domestic afflictions distress me sincerely; and, as far as you are
concerned, my feelings will always reach the furthest limits to which I
may still venture. Throughout life your losses shall be mine, your gains
mine also, and, however much I may lose in sensibility, there will
always remain a drop of it for you."
When Moore obtained his greatest success, and arrived at the summit of
popularity, by the publication of "Lalla Rookh," Byron's pleasure was
equal to the encouragements he had given him. But of his noble soul, in
which no feeling of jealousy could enter, we shall speak elsewhere.
Here, in conclusion, I must add that his friendship for Moore remained
stanch through time and circumstances, and even notwithstanding Moore's
wrongs toward him, of which I shall speak in another chapter.
In treating of Byron's friendships, I have endeavored to in set forth
the wrongs which some of his friends, and Moore particular, have
committed against him both before and after his death.
If, as Moore observes, it be true that Byron never lost a friend, was