The Burning of Byron's Memoirs : New and Unpublished Essays and Papers [1 ed.] 9781443874007, 9781443868150

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The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs New and Unpublished Essays and Papers By

Peter Cochran

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs: New and Unpublished Essays and Papers By Peter Cochran This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2014 by Peter Cochran All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-6815-9 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-6815-0

Temperate I am, yet never had a temper; Modest I am, yet with some slight assurance; Changeable too, yet somehow “Idem semper;” Patient, but not enamoured of endurance; Cheerful, but sometimes rather apt to whimper; Mild, but at times a sort of “Hercules furens;” So that I almost think the same skin, For one without, has two or three within. (Don Juan XVII, st.11)

“It takes two to make a conjuring trick: the illusionist’s sleight of hand and the stooge’s desire to be deceived.” —Francis Wyndham.

CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. x Foreword .................................................................................................... xi Abbreviations ........................................................................................... xiii Moore, Hobhouse and the Burning of Byron’s Memoirs ............................ 1 Byron’s Dirty Jokes ................................................................................... 18 Byron’s “Divided Loyalties” ..................................................................... 28 Being “Byron’s Best Friend” ..................................................................... 37 Being Byron’s Banker ............................................................................... 57 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage ...................................................................... 71 Byron’s Fan Letters ................................................................................... 85 Grasping the Nettle: Byron, the Turks, and the Greeks ............................. 89 Byron and Ali Pasha .................................................................................. 98 Byron’s Problem with Mothers ............................................................... 104 “Assyrian Tales”: Byron, Homosexuality and Incest............................... 112 Byron the Vampire, and the Vampire Women ........................................ 142 Part I: Charlotte Dacre Part II: Felicia Hemans Byron’s Legacy, and Byron’s Inheritance ............................................... 169 Byron and his Will’o’th’wisps ................................................................ 181

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Contents

Byron and Scotland ................................................................................. 190 Byron and Shakespeare ........................................................................... 197 Byron in the Movies ................................................................................ 219 Byron Grew Up in Venice ....................................................................... 225 Byron and Newstead Abbey .................................................................... 239 The Corsair, Byron’s Silliest Poem ......................................................... 253 Byron’s Religion versus Byron’s Women ............................................... 262 Byron’s Library ....................................................................................... 275 Byron and Plagiarism .............................................................................. 283 Byron’s Charities ..................................................................................... 316 Altering the Focus: Byron’s Reading of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.................................................................................................... 322 Don Juan: Confluence-Point of many Traditions .................................... 328 Why did Byron go back to Greece? ......................................................... 339 Fletcher on Medwin ................................................................................. 346 Two After-Dinner Talks Byron and Birthdays ................................................................................ 358 Why the English Hate Byron ................................................................... 366 Comedy The Devil & Newstead Abbey................................................................. 382 Cynthia Ridge: The Forgotten Poet of Newark ....................................... 389

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The Editor’s Tale ..................................................................................... 392 Byron’s Literary Reception in North-East Karelia .................................. 403 Moviemakers Discover Robert Southey .................................................. 406 Contributors’ Guide ................................................................................. 408 Bibliography ............................................................................................ 411 Index ........................................................................................................ 414

INTRODUCTION

Many of these essays were first published in the Newstead Byron Society Review. Others were first given as papers, in the locations specified. Where an item has not been published or given publicly anywhere, the fact is stated. Some incorporate material has already been published in different forms; but, I hope, the book will give such material a new context. P.C.

FOREWORD BYRON AS CASSANDRA

On October 27th 1983, a conference of Soviet and American scientists in Tbilisi, Georgia, was convened to warn against nuclear weapons and war. At one of the sessions, in the Institute of Geophysics of the Georgian Academy of Sciences, Academician G. S. Golitsin gave a paper about the meteorological consequences of an imagined explosion of half the world’s nuclear weapons. The mathematical investigations of the effects of dust and smoke thrown into the air, of the thermal balance of the atmosphere, the transfer of air masses, and the dissipation into the atmosphere of nuclear detritus from all over the Earth, showed that for more than half a year the whole Earth would be sunk into a haze impenetrable to solar rays – into complete darkness. The air-temperature all over the planet would drop to –10C and lower, as winter came. The seas would be the only sources near which people could seek shelter and warmth. The earth would be covered with ice, and a so-called “nuclear winter” would set in. People would be left without food, everything inflammable would be burnt, down to and including asphalt, and forests would be enveloped in flames and smoke. This was the horrible picture painted by the Soviet scientists, and confirmed by their American colleagues. Few at the meeting knew of the apocalyptic picture of the earth’s ruin given by Byron in Darkness. Academician Golitsin was pleased and astonished to learn of the poem, even though he had Byron’s Complete Works, in English, back in Moscow. The Russian scientists knew that, after the example of Edgar Allan Poe, the Americans must know and love Byron too. Just a few months later in 1984 the American scientists published a booklet,1 edited by Anthony Rudolf, including the text of Darkness, and the story of its creation, a copy of which was given to Golitsin on behalf of the members of the delegation. The American scientists, in their reports for the Senate, also mentioned the poem, and a number of television films 1: Rudolf, Anthony. Byron’s Darkness: Lost Summer and Nuclear Winter. Menard Press 1984. Includes English text and Russian translation by Turgenev, from Peterburgski Sbornik 1846.

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were produced about it. Byron was thus revealed at the very front of the struggle of humankind against nuclear war, nearly a century and a half before such a thing was imagined by anyone else. His prophetic genius had been demonstrated at the Tbilisi meteorological conference.2 ————— In so far as the conflict between East and West is still at the forefront of everyone’s minds, and (a kind of) Islam and (a kind of) Christianity seem locked into an increasingly horrible dialogue, we can easily credit Byron with prophetic insight there too, partial as his understanding of both religions was: he is far-sighted enough to refer to Wahabism (Childe Harold II, 77, 5) as a threat: its influence is now world-wide. His intention – to show each side that it is a complementary reflection, not an adversary, of the other – appears most necessary in 2014. In so far as Mr Putin seems anxious to extend Russian power into Ukraine, he’s only repeating what the armies of Catherine the Great and Potemkin are doing in Don Juan VII, VIII and IX: though we trust that Mr Putin does not wish to set his son on the throne of Constantinople, and that his tough physical regime (an hour’s judo daily) will preclude his dying of indigestion, as Potemkin is reported by Byron as doing. Sexual politics is an even hotter potato now than it was in Byron’s day, when only peripheral feminists like Mary Wollstonecraft articulated it from the woman’s viewpoint: not everyone empathises with Byron’s depiction of woman’s lot, and of women in general (especially in Don Juan); but it can’t be ignored. There is even, I read, an anti-feminist feminist reaction against the feminism which Byron half-articulates. About the United States, Byron appears less of a Cassandra. He saw it as an exciting young republic, full of promise, whose inhabitants prefaced every sentence with “I guess”, “I reckon”, and “I calculate”; and was disappointed when they didn’t. He insisted on a black American servant addressing him as “Massa”. He did not foresee Dick Cheney, gangsta-rap, or Lockheed Martin. His cry at the end of the Ode to Venice (“One freeman more, America! – to thee!”) is underscored by enthusiasm for his naïve images of Daniel Boone, and of Rapp the Harmonist. He may mock Campbell’s Gertrude of Wyoming, but has nothing better to offer. One thing you can’t say about Byron, on most subjects, is that he’s out-dated. 2: Adapted from Anzor Gvelesiani, Byron’s Apocalyptic Clairvoyance, Newstead Byron Review, July 2001, p 74.

ABBREVIATIONS

To economize on space in the notes, the following abbreviations are used for the books referred to. See the Bibliography for further information. The edition used is the one on the website of the International Association of Byron Societies. In the notes: B.: Byron BJ: BLJ:

The Byron Journal Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (13 vols, John Murray, 1973-94)

When a citation from BLJ is headed “text from”, followed by a manuscript reference, it means that the text is not from BLJ but from the original manuscript. If a prose quotation is left-justified only, it is taken from the original manuscript; if left- and right-justified, from a printed source. Codes are as follows:

{Byron’s interlineated corrections and second thoughts} [editorial additions]. Blessington: Coleridge: CHP: CMP:

Ernest J.Lovell jr. (ed.), Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron (Princeton 1969) The Works of Lord Byron: A New, Revised and Enlarged Edition with illustrations. Poetry, ed. E.H.Coleridge (7 vols, John Murray, 1898-1904) Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991)

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CPW: DJ: Finlay: HVSV: LBAR: LJ: LJM: LLB: Marchand: Medwin: Millingen: NBSR: NLS: RLL: SAHC: St.Clair I: St. Clair II: TVOJ:

Abbreviations

Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann and Barry Weller, 7 vols (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980-93) Byron, Don Juan Finlay, George. A History of Greece (Oxford 1877) Ernest J. Lovell jr. (ed.), His Very Self and Voice (Macmillan 1954) Langley Moore, Doris. Lord Byron Accounts Rendered, (John Murray, 1974) The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, ed. R.E.Prothero (John Murray, 1898-1904) The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Liverpool University Press, 2007) Langley Moore, Doris. The Late Lord Byron, (John Murray, 1961). Marchand, Leslie A., Byron: A Biography, 3 vols (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1957) Medwin, Thomas. Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron at Pisa, ed. Lovellm (Princeton 1966) Millingen, Julius. Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece (London, 1831) Newstead Byron Society Review National Library of Scotland J.C. Hobhouse (ed. Lady Dorchester), Recollections of a Long Life (6 vols. John Murray, 1909-11) Fischer, Doucet Devin and Reiman, Donald, eds., Shelley and his Circle (Harvard 1961-2002) St.Clair, William. That Greece Might Still Be Free (Oxford 1971) William St. Clair, Lord Elgin and the Marbles (Oxford 1998) Byron, The Vision of Judgement

MOORE, HOBHOUSE, AND THE BURNING OF BYRON’S MEMOIRS First published NBSR, 2011

Thomas Moore

John Cam Hobhouse

Lord John Russell decided not to include this section in his 1852-6 edition of Moore’s Memoirs, Journal and Correspondence – the fact that Hobhouse was still alive, and the Murray house still present in the form of John Murray III, probably affected his judgement. He included only the start and finish (printed below in italics). The volume from September 1st 1822 to October 19th 1825 then became mysteriously soaked in water. It was first abandoned as irrecoverably damaged, but was restored by experts at the Harry Ransom Humanities Center, Austin, Texas. Text from The Journal of Thomas Moore, ed. Wilfred S. Dowden, 6 vols. Delaware 1983-91, Vol. VI pp.2441-5. I have added notes at the foot of the page, commentary in bold, and sections from Hobhouse’s diary in italics. My thanks to Jeffery Vail for his help. Byron first mentions the intention of writing his memoirs, and, simultaneously, Don Juan, in a letter to Murray of July 10th 1818:

2

Moore, Hobhouse, and the Burning of Byron’s Memoirs Your projected editions for November had better be postponed – as I have some things in project or preparation that may be of use to you – though not very important in themselves. – I have {completed} an Ode on Venice; and {have} two stories – one serious & One ludicrous (a1 la Beppo)2 not yet finished – & in no hurry to be so. – – You talk of the letter to Hobhouse being much admired – & {speak of prose} – I think of writing (for your full edition) some memoirs of my life to prefix to them – upon the same model (though far enough I fear from reaching it) as that of Gifford – Hume – &c. and this without any intention of making disclosures or remarks upon living people which would be unpleasant to them – but I think it might be done & well done – however this is to be considered. – I have materials in plenty – but the greater part of these could not be used by me – nor for three hundred years to come – however there is enough without these – and {merely as a literary man} – to make a preface for such an edition as you meditate – but this by the way – I have not made up my mind. – –3

On October 29th 18194 he reports them as written and as having been given to Moore. Hobhouse seems never to have read them. Caroline Lamb said they “were of no value – a mere copy-book”. Gifford said “that the whole Memoirs were fit only for a brothel and would damn Lord Byron to certain infamy if published”; Lord Rancliffe had said they were “of a low, pothouse description”; Douglas Kinnaird liked them;5 Lords Holland and John Russell said they were harmless. “Some of them were agreeable enough” were Holland’s words, and Russell gave it as his opinion that “three or four pages were too gross and indelicate for publication”, but that “His early youth in Greece, and his sensibility to the scenes around him, when resting on a rock from the swimming excursions he took from the Piraeus, were strikingly described”.6 Moore thought that “though the second part ... was full of very coarse things yet that (with the exception of 1: B. erases the acute accent from “a”. 2: B. refers to Don Juan I, which he started on July 3rd, a week previously. He may withhold the poem’s title in case Murray panics, or he may not have decided on a title – none appears at the top of the rough draft. 3: B. to Murray, July 10th 1818 (text from NLS Ms.43489 f.243; BLJ VI 58-9). 4: BLJ VI 235-6. 5: BLJ VIII 91. 6: LLB 53.

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three or four lines) the first part contained nothing which on the score of decency, might not be safely published.”7 Samuel Rogers claimed to remember an incident from them which related to the wedding day: “... on his marriage-night, Byron suddenly started out of his first sleep; a taper, which burned in the room, was casting a ruddy glare through the crimson curtains of the bed; and he could not help exclaiming, in a voice so loud that he wakened Lady B., ‘Good God, I am surely in hell!’”8 Byron’s letter to Annabella about them9 is also relevant. For Byron’s generalised descriptions, see BLJ VI 63-4, 236 and 257. The second part contained all sorts of erotic adventures. Moore sold the Memoirs to Murray for 2,000 guineas in July 182110 but the money was later converted, at Moore’s request, into a loan, redeemable only while Byron lived (this last condition had been forgotten, at the time of the burning, by both Murray and Moore). The arrangement had been suggested by Moore to Longmans on March 20th 1824 and finalised on March 27th.11 Moore was trying to raise the money (via a lifeinsurance) when the news of Byron’s death was reported. For Murray’s version, see his letter to Wilmot Horton of May 19th 1824.12 Both Francis Burdett and Douglas Kinnaird offered to pay Moore the 2,000 guineas so that the memoirs could be destroyed: but, after the burning, it emerged that Moore could no longer have redeemed his loan, Byron being dead. Murray had said that he did not want the money – but it now turned out the memoirs had been his property anyhow! As will be seen, Hobhouse planned the destruction of Byron’s memoirs within minutes of receiving the news of his death. A feeling, current at the time, that all memoirs and biographies were slightly indecent, may play a small part in making him do what he did. But fear of being tarred with the same brush as his libertine friend, now, when he was, as an M.P., respectable, was his main motive. Had he of all people suggested that the Memoirs be placed securely for a sufficiently long period, until no embarrassment could be caused to anyone living, he might have been listened to. As it was, Hobhouse became willing party to the greatest act of vandalism in English literary history.

7: Journal ed. Dowden, II p. 732. 8: Table-Talk, 1952, 193, quoted LBW, p. 251: see also LLB pp. 55-6. 9: BLJ VI 261. 10: See LJ V 242n. 11: Journal ed. Dowden, II pp. 720 and 723. 12: Printed LLB p. 30, quoting Smiles, A Publisher and His Friends.

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————— Byron’s London friends hear about his death at Missolonghi early in the morning of Friday May 14th 1824. Hobhouse diarises, After the first access of grief was over I then determined to lose no time in doing my duty by preserving all that was left to me of my dear friend – his fame: my thoughts were turned to the Memoirs of his Life, given to Thomas Moore, and deposited by him in Mr Murray’s hands for certain considerations. Now read Moore’s description of what happened … MOORE: 16th [Sunday]—He [Wilmot Horton]13 undertook also to see Mrs. Leigh14 on the subject, proposing that we should meet at Murray’s (instead of Mrs. Leigh’s) tomorrow, at eleven o’clock, and that then, after the payment of the money by me to Murray, the MS. should be placed in some banker’s hands till it was decided among us what should be done with it. Called also upon Frank Doyle15 (an old acquaintance of mine, who was Lady Byron’s representative in the transaction) but saw only Mrs. Doyle who said I might have a chance of finding him at seven in the evening—walked then with Luttrell16 into the Park. In talking of what I should do [he said you have made a sufficient sacrifice in cancelling all the improper passages deleted] he said “yes—yes—You have nothing to do but bite off your indelicate parts and throw them among your pursuers”—Met Lord Lansdowne,17 to whom we told what we had proposed and he considered it highly fair—only conceding, in his opinion, rather too much, as it ought to rest with me what parts were to be rejected and what preserved. In walking through the park, met my Bath friend Bayly,18 and, as I had sent an apology to Lambton’s19 for dinner, proposed to join him at his Coffee-House at eight o’clock—Called on Frank Doyle at seven & saw him. Went over the same ground as with Horton and made 13: Wilmot Horton was a cousin of Byron’s but a close friend of Annabella: his wife inspired She Walks in Beauty. 14: Augusta. Hobhouse sees her three times over the weekend, “persuading” her to burn the Memoirs herself. 15: Colonel Francis Hastings Doyle, another close friend of Annabella. He and Horton act as her agents. 16: Henry Luttrell, friend of Moore and Rogers: Byron admired his poem Advice to Julia. 17: The Third Marquess of Lansdowne, Whig peer and patron of Moore. 18: Robert Bayly, otherwise unidentified friend of Moore’s. 19: John George Lambton, later, as Earl of Durham, Governor-General of Canada.

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the same proposal. He gave no opinion on the subject but in order to make sure that the conditions were right repeated over what I had said—Though I thought [he] was of opinion that only the objectionable parts should be burned, yet it would appear to Lord Byron’s family that the whole ought to be burnt [if] I would consent to that step. On my assenting to this as my meaning and intention he added that [MS damaged] latter determination being [MS damaged] he thought it was the [MS damaged] duty of Lord Byron’s family to see that I should not suffer by [MS damaged] that he could answer for Lady Byron’s being ready to [return] to me the sum I was about to pay to Mr. Murray—This, however, I told him was entirely out of the question—I had declined the same proposal from D. Kinnaird20 and was determined to persist in my refusal. Went from thence to Ibbetson’s21 and dined with Bayley & a cousin of his. Called upon Rogers22—asked him to let me draw upon him for the overplus above the 2000 guineas for interest, expences &c. 17 [Monday]—Wrote a note to Hobhouse, telling him that, in consequence of my interview with Mr. Horton, a modification had taken place in the arrangement I had made with him and that we were now to meet at Murray’s at eleven o’clock. Here is the note as recorded by Hobhouse in his diary: Monday morning – Dear Hobhouse There has been since I saw you yesterday a sort of modification of the agreement then agreed between us which was suggested by my own friends Luttrell, Rogers, and Lord Lansdowne, and concurred in by Mr Wilmot Horton and Doyle, whom I saw on the subject – I trust that this arrangement will be equally satisfactory to you – as the first step towards it I mean to redeem the Mss – this morning from Murray at eleven o’clock (in Albemarle Street) and it would be perhaps as well that you should be there – Very truly yours Thomas Moore

20: Kinnaird’s absence from the weekend’s activities speaks volumes. He goes to Scotland. 21: Ibbetson’s establishment unidentified. 22: Samuel Rogers, banker-poet.

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Moore: … Set off to Longman’s23 for the money—they much pleased to find that, by what passed yesterday, there was a prospect of some of the MS being presented for publication. After waiting till half past ten, the money arrived from the Bank—two notes of a thousand pounds each and one of a hundred— Moore intends to offer Murray hard cash, not even a post-dated cheque. Moore: … set off to Luttrell’s to beg he would go with me to Murray’s— met Hobhouse (it was then about 11) in Albany Place, who seemed much disconcerted and angered at the change that had occurred. Nothing short of the immediate & total destruction of the MS—& though I repeated over & over that I still kept to my original intention of having the MS wholly at Mrs. Leigh’s disposal, yet he still seemed to consider my consultation with Mr. Horton and my suggestion of a less summary means of proceeding as a breach of the arrangement made with him and D. Kinnaird—[MS damaged, half a line] to Murray’s lodgings, where we found Murray in an equal state of excitement against me. A good deal of loud talking during which Murray threatened to burn the MS himself, and applied some impertinent epithet to my conduct, which induced me to say with a contemptuous smile—“Hard words, Mr. Murray—but, if you chuse to take the privileges of a gentleman, I am ready to accord them to you.” Moore is threatening to challenge Murray (who as a tradesman would not normally be expected to duel). Hobhouse: Presently Murray came, and afterwards Luttrell. On hearing that Moore proposed that the Mss should be read, and extracts made for publication, Murray became angry. He sat down, and with a very determined voice and manner protested that the Mss should be burnt forthwith, according to Moore’s written proposal. Moore then said that the Mss was his, and that he had now a right to redeem them, upon which Murray said as follows – “I do not care whose the Mss are – here am I as a tradesman – I do not care a farthing about having your money, or whether I ever get it or not – but such regard have I for Lord Byron’s honour and fame that I am willing and determined to destroy these Mss which have been read by Mr Gifford, who says they would render Lord 23: Longman’s are Moore’s publishers.

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Byron’s name eternally infamous. It is very hard that I as a tradesman should be willing to make a sacrifice that you as a gentleman will not consent to!!” Moore replied something to this, when Murray rose and said, “by god, then I say I will burn the papers, let come what will of it – you agreed to it – you proposed it – you have acted anything but like a man of honour!” Moore said, “go on sir, you know you may say what you like”.24 Luttrell now and then put in a word, saying he could see no harm in reading the Mss. I took the other side, and insisted very strongly on the impropriety of such a proceeding. Moore said that both Wilmot Horton and Colonel Doyle, friends of Lady Byron’s family, saw no objection as to the perusal of the Mss. I said I could hardly believe that. Murray said that these gentlemen were waiting at his house in order to see the Mss burnt.25 On this we agreed all to go to Murray’s. Moore: … As near as I can recall this was what I said—but whatever it was, he saw its meaning, and was more courteous. From thence we went all together to Murray’s, where W. Horton & F. Doyle were waiting for us. The former had seen Mrs. Leigh in the mean time, and had entirely changed his opinion with respect to the mode of disposing of the MS—In this Hobhouse afterwards triumphed, as between his evident wish to imply that I had misrepresented Horton’s opinion to him—and W. Horton not very ready to admit the total difference of his opinion on yesterday from that of today, I felt myself placed, at first, in rather a humiliating situation. The testimony of Luttrell, however, who had been present at the conversation and assisted rather a reluctant effort of candour on the part of Mr. Horton set this matter right again. I then explained my wishes with respect to the disposition of the MS as quietly as the impatient taunts and objections of Hobhouse would allow me. His whole manner, indeed, was such as made me feel it necessary to keep a strict rein over my temper— resolving, at the same time, to take note of any thing that could be fairly considered as insulting, and call him quietly to account for it afterwards. It was, however, more in the looks and the brusquerie of his manner than in any thing he actually said that the offensiveness consisted. At one time, on

24: Moore’s implication is that Murray, as a tradesman, not a gentleman, is free to be as abusive as he likes without fear of being challenged. 25: Doyle subsequently wrote to Horton that he had no idea that the meeting was going to be about the destruction of the Memoirs, and that Lady Byron had instructed no such thing: see The Late Lord Byron p.27.

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my representing not only the injustice they did to Lord Byron’s memory in thus totally and without examination condemning the work … Moore and Luttrell are the only ones who present this, the obvious case against the Memoirs’ destruction. Moore: … but (as a minor consideration) the injustice inflicted on myself, in not letting me have the advantage of any parts of it that might be found unexceptionable, Hobhouse exclaimed, “This is letting the author predominate over the friend.” He frequently, too held up the paper which D. Kinnaird had written from my dictation to be shown to Murray, and said—“We must keep him to his bond—we must keep him to his bond”— On one of these ejaculations of his, I pointed smilingly towards him and said, “Look at Shylock,” which seemed to touch him—from its coolness— Hobhouse: Moore still remonstrated, saying “Remember I protest against the burning as contradictory to Lord Byron’s wishes and unjust to me”. – “That is not in the bond”,26 said I, holding his proposal out to him.27 Moore said, “Shylock and his bond!” – “Whatever you please”, I replied, “But I protest against your protestation, which you never said a word of originally”. Moore: … What was most provoking in him, indeed, as that, though I accompanied every protest I made against the total destruction of the MS. with a profession of my instantaneous readiness in conformity with my first agreement to do whatever they (as the representatives of Mrs. Leigh) Moore does not know that Augusta has been bullied by Hobhouse ever since Friday, and has no will of her own. Until this weekend, she had never heard of the Memoirs. Moore: … desired, he would still persist in representing me as recreant to my original engagement. I saw that Frank Doyle, indeed (though with but little more consideration than the rest) endeavoured to set him right on this point, and mentioned in a low voice to him our conversation of yesterday evening, in which I had declared my readiness to abide by whatever should be Mrs. Leigh’s decision—

26: The Merchant of Venice IV i 257. 27: “me” (Ms.)

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Hobhouse: Someone28 then started whether or not it would be better to deposit the Mss under seals somewhere in order to compare them with any spurious copy that might be published – this was overruled.29 Colonel Doyle lastly said to Moore, “I understand then that you stand to your original proposal to put the Mss into Mrs Leigh’s absolute disposal?” – “I do”, said Moore, “but with the protestation”. – “Well then”, said Doyle – “I put them into the fire” – accordingly Wilmot and Doyle tore up the mss, and the copy, and burnt them.30

28: The Late Lord Byron says this was Wilmot Horton. 29: Not, however, by Hobhouse. RLL (III 341-2) has “Mr. Hobhouse said he could see no objection to this proposal if Mrs. Leigh consented, but the proposal was overruled.” LLB (p.35) contends that the person overruling was either Murray or Doyle – the latter acting (perhaps) on Lady Byron’s orders. 30: RLL (III 342) has “Mr Wilmot Horton handed some of the papers to Mr Hobhouse to be put into the fire, but that gentleman declined, saying, that those only who were empowered by Mrs. Leigh should have any share in the actual destruction of the Memoirs”.

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Moore doesn’t describe the burning of the Memoirs by Horton and Doyle. They offer Hobhouse a share in the incineration, but he demurs. Above is the grate, at 50 Albemarle Street London (photographed 2010) where the burning was done. Moore: During this discussion (if such a hoity toity proceeding can deserve that name) Mr. Murray was frequently asked to produce the Bond and agreement between him and me, prefatory to my paying the money which was all that now remained to be done. Moore pays 2,000 guineas in redemption of a property which has just been destroyed. He’s determined that no-one should suspect him of having gained financially by the event. Mr. W. Horton, having been for some time impatient to be gone, now took his departure, and Doyle soon followed him. Horton writes notes to Annabella and Augusta that evening. Here is the one to Augusta: Downing St 6 oclock 17th May / 24 Dear Augusta I send an express over to Lady B. to tell her that those Memoirs have been destroyed – & I shall go over & breakfast with her on Wednesday – be perfectly assured that I have never thought you in the slightest degree unreasonable & that I cannot be more than I am Your affect. Cou JWH. I will call whenever I can! Moore: The agreement was at length found and produced, where to my great surprise the clause which I had by Luttrell’s suggestion desired to be inserted and which I thought I saw inserted in the rough draft of the agreement was not there at all. But, instead of the concession I had counted upon allowing the three months in the event of Lord Byron’s death to raise the 2000 Gs. and redeem my pledge, the [terms] of this agreement made the MS redeemable only during the life of Lord Byron, and added that “Mr. Murray may publish it three months after his death.”

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So, unknown to them all, Murray has just presided at the destruction of his own property. Moore: This singular variation from the sort of clause I had intended together with the uselessness [of the] stipulation which it contained (and the manuscript, on becoming Mr. Murray’s might be published next day, if he chose) seemed to strike everyone present with something worse than surprize. What my own opinion about it is I will not even here express because Mr. Turner31 (the solicitor of Murray) to whose son, in the presence of Murray, I dictated the clause, has the reputation of being a very honourable person & I have no reason to suspect his son of being otherwise. Moore may be hinting at a suspicion that Turner jr. did in fact keep the “three month” clause out of the agreement, to sabotage any plans Moore may have harboured to keep them from Murray. The circumstance is at least extraordinary. It appeared to me that, contrary to the notion on which we had all proceeded, the property of the MS was after the death of Lord B legally & strictly in Murray, and therefore, according to all ordinary views of the case I had no right to pay for its destruction by Murray. I hinted something of this at the moment but was luckily not attended to. I say “luckily” because I never should have felt comfortable again if the money had been paid by any one but myself. Murray, indeed, felt the awkwardness of the transaction & when I proffered the 2000 Gs. said “I do not feel that I have any right to take the money”—but, on my insisting, & Hobhouse, too, appearing to wonder that he should hesitate, he accepted it, and, my account of interest &c. being ready made out I gave a draft for the sum (176 pounds, I think) on Rogers. Upon this being done, Hobhouse came up to me laughingly, and said, “Well, my dear Moore, I hope you will forgive any thing I have said that angered you,” adding some other things in a jocular manner and saying good humouredly, “Mind, I am not Shylock”—I replied two or three times I had felt he was on the point of saying something I must notice, but that it was all over now. Murray too came to apologize, in his tradesmanlike way, for offense he might have given and said two or three times, “Shoot me, but forgive me.” Him, however, I received with more coldness—we now (Luttrell, Hobhouse, & I) left Murray’s together, and parted, after a 31: Sharon Turner, Murray’s lawyer, who had advised him on how Don Juan could best be defended in court.

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Moore, Hobhouse, and the Burning of Byron’s Memoirs

good deal of laughing, in Albany Place, Hobhouse calling out after us, as he heard us still laughing about something, “You merry undone dogs”— Hobhouse: Moore and Luttrell went away. Murray spoke to me about the propriety of Murray’s family reimbursing Moore, and said he should advise it. I ran after Moore and Luttrell, and told [them] this. Luttrell agreed, and I did not think that Moore objected much – he told me a story of an Irishman who being asked why sentence should not be passed upon him said, “Oh by Jesus you have settled it all very nicely amongst you”.32 I laughed, and replied, “It is all your own fault – if it had not been for that Irish honour of yours, Murray would have burnt the mss – and you would have had no return of money to make ... now it appears Murray was right, Kinnaird was right, I was right, and you were wrong.” Luttrell quoted “Father Foigard’s preference of taking money logice,”33 and so we parted. My impression certainly was that Moore regretted he had paid the money, and was willing to get it for the family again. Called on Mrs Leigh. Moore: … Went to the Longmans, who [half a line unrecovered] had happened—It was evident to them, as well as to me, that Murray’s violent anxiety for the total destruction of the MS arose from his fears that any part of it should find its way into their hands, and so far he had triumphed. Was Murray’s anxiety to burn the Memoirs just a determination, then, to protect them from publication by Longman’s? Would he rather see them destroyed than published by a rival? Moore: Felt altogether very uncomfortable—had been treated by none of the parties in this business as I deserved—instead of having my honourable intentions properly appreciated (and I must say that selfinterest was the last thing I thought of) I had found myself in contact with coarse or cold people who consulting only their own selfishness or impatience, cared not how they trampled upon the feelings of others in their way—The insulting looks & manners of Hobhouse, too, recurred to 32: RLL (III 346) has “Oh nothing, except that by Jasus you’ve settled it all very nicely amongst you”. 33: Father Foigard is the Irish Jesuit in Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem. See IV i: “If you receive the money beforehand, ’twill be logice, a bribe; but if you stay till afterwards, ’twill be only a gratification” (my thanks to Chris Little here).

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me, and though I had given way to his good humoured advances at the end, I felt now as if I ought not to have done so), and [as] if the easiness of my temper had compromised my self-respect [MS damaged]. These thoughts so gained upon me in the state of nervousness into which the whole transaction had thrown me, that I would have given worlds at that moment to have been placed hostilely face to face with Hobhouse with pistols, not from any hostility to him but from feeling that nothing else could now set me right with myself. In this mood sat down on my return home and wrote as near as possible the following note to him. “Dear Hobhouse—Though it may be difficult to believe (particularly after the friendly manner in which we parted) that you could seriously mean to insult me today, yet some of your looks and phrases, which seemed so very like it and which haunt me so uncomfortably that it would be a great satisfaction to me to be assured by yourself that you had no such intention, and I trust you will lose no time in setting my mind at rest on the subject. Yours truly &c”— This is Hobhouse’s version of Moore’s letter: 15 Duke Street, St James’s Dear Hobhouse Tho’ it is difficult to suppose (particularly after the apparently friendly manner in which you parted from me) that you could have seriously have intended to insult me during the conversation of today, yet there was something in your manner and certain expressions that looked so very like it, and which haunts me so uncomfortably, that it would be highly satisfactory to be told by yourself that you had no such intention – and I trust you will do me [the]34 favour, as soon as possible, to set my mind at rest on the subject yours truly Thomas Moore To – J.C.Hobhouse Esq. Moore: … despathed this note, & went to dinner at Benetts35—company, the Phipps’s,36 Spring Rice,37 Grattan,38 &c. &c.—not at all well & happy 34: H. adds Moore’s “the”. 35: John Benett, M.P. for Wiltshire. 36: “The Phipps’s” are in fact the First and Second Earls of Mulgrave, politicians both. 37: Thomas Spring-Rice, first Baron Monteagle.

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Moore, Hobhouse, and the Burning of Byron’s Memoirs

so returned home early—Made up my mind to the probable consequence of my note to Hobhouse—thought of all I should leave behind me unprotected but feared that they could not outweigh the considerations which then pressed upon me. 18 [Tuesday]—No answer from Hobhouse, which I was not surprized at— felt I had acted most irregularly in making this call upon him, after our having parted so amicably, yet, at the same time, felt that I must follow it up—whom should I send to him, though?—Luttrell, who had been witness to all that had passed between us would certainly not back me in such a proceeding—thought of Edward Moore39—then decided for Maurice Fitzgerald,40 and went to look for him to Brooks’s,41 Sir J Newport’s42 &c &c but could not find him out. At last the lucky thought struck me of going to Sir Francis Burdett,43 who being the common friend both of Hobhouse & me, might do something, perhaps, to compose my mind— Burdett all kindness & good sense—told him all my feelings & that something must be done, that I felt no hostility to Hobhouse—on the contrary, had a high opinion of him—but that my spirit was wounded, and that he & I must either fight or be friends—Burdett said that, not having been present, he could not, of course, speak to what had happened—that Hobhouse had a degree of nervous impatience about any thing that he had set his heart upon, which to those not well acquainted with him might seem impetuous & over-bearing, but that he was convinced, from what he knew to be Hobhouse’s opinion of me, that he could not possibly have meant to say any thing, that would wound me—He then added what a shocking thing it would be that Hobhouse and I should fight about our common friend Lord Byron,44 or any thing connected with him and asked me, who had been present during the whole of the transaction. I told him Luttrell, and after some further explanation of my feelings, & my readiness to meet Hobhouse, in perfect amity, if I was once satisfied, left him. Went down to the Rock Insurance Office to arrange about the insurance of my life for the Longmans, and found it would be better every way to transfer to them the present seven year Policy I have for 2000 than 38: Henry Grattan jr., MP for Dublin: accompanied Hobhouse to Paris in 1814. 39: Edward Moore, close friend of Tom Moore. 40: Maurice Fitzgerald unidentified. 41: Brook’s’, Pall Mall Whig club. 42: Sir J. Newport unidentified. 43: Sir Francis Burdett, rich but radical MP, friend of both Moore and Hobhouse. 44: The idea of Moore and Hobhouse duelling over his Memoirs would have amused B., who enjoyed stirring things.

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to effect a new one. Called upon Barnes & Black,45 and told them the particulars of what had happened but begged them not to say any thing of it, unless there should appear misrepresentation on the subject—impressed this particularly on Black, as the [person who] is generally considered to speak from myself—on my return home was called upon by Burdett, who told me that Hobhouse, having come to consult him soon after me upon the same subject they both proceeded to Luttrell, who said that, though Hobhouse’s manner was certainly rather—I forget the epithet—during the discussion, yet that his manner in speaking to me of it afterward was such as showed that he was really sorry for it, & such as might perfectly satisfy me, that I appeared to him, at the time to think so myself, and that, in his opinion, I had no right to send such a note to Hobhouse—This was, of course, sufficient for me & I thanked Burdett (as I felt) most cordially for his mediation—He then alluded to my receiving the money from the family, which with a very different view of the matter from what I saw he felt in the morning, he seemed to think I ought to have no objection to. I did not remind him of what he said in the morning but expressed my determination on no account to take the money—dressed in a hurry having been invited this week past to meet the Princesses46 at Lady Donegal’s47 at two oclock. Lord John Russell writes, justifying his excision: Hence, when the news of Lord Byron’s unexpected death arrived, all parties, with the most honourable wishes and consistent views, were thrown into perplexity and apparent discord. Mr. Moore wished to redeem the manuscript, and submit it to Mrs. Leigh, Lord Byron’s sister, to be destroyed or published with erasures and omissions. Sir John Hobhouse wished it to be immediately destroyed, and two representatives of Mrs. Leigh, expressed the same wish. Mr. Murray was willing at once to give up the manuscript on repayment of his 2000 guineas with interest The result was, that after a very unpleasant scene at Mr. Murray’s, the manuscript was destroyed by Mr. Wilmot Horton and Col. Doyle as the representatives of Mrs. Leigh, with the full consent of Mr. Moore, who repaid to Mr. Murray the sum he had advanced, with the interest then due. After the whole had been burnt the agreement was found, and it appeared that Mr. Moore’s interest in the MS had entirely ceased on the death of 45: Barnes and Black are editors respectively of The Times and The Morning Chronicle. Moore plants articles with both. 46: “The Princesses” are the daughters of … 47: … Barbara, Lady Donegal, society friend of Moore’s.

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Lord Byron, by which event the property became absolutely vested in Mr. Murray. The details of this scene have been recorded both by Mr. Moore and Lord Broughton, and perhaps by others. Lord Broughton having kindly permitted me to read his narrative, I can say, that the leading facts related by him and Mr. Moore agree. Both narratives retain marks of the irritation which the circumstances of the moment produced; but as they both (Mr. Moore and Sir John Hobhouse) desired to do what was most honourable to Lord Byron’s memory, and as they lived in terms of friendship afterwards, I have omitted details which recall a painful scene, and would excite painful feelings. As to the manuscript itself, having read the greater part, if not the whole, I should say that three or four pages of it were too gross and indelicate for publication; that the rest, with few exceptions, contained little traces of Lord Byron’s genius, and no interesting details of his life. His early youth in Greece, and his sensibility to the scenes around him, when resting on a rock in the swimming excursions he took from the Piræus, were strikingly described. But, on the whole, the world is no loser by the sacrifice made of the Memoirs of this great poet. – J.R.48 ————— When Moore had sold the Memoirs to Murray for 2,000 guineas in July 1821, part of the contract had said that, in the event of Byron’s death, Moore would write his life for Murray, “interweaving the said Memoirs in the proposed biography”.49 After the event, Moore did of course write a life of Byron for Murray: but without his primary source. No-one present at the burning, except Moore, appeared to know what they were doing: but the absent Annabella knew exactly what she was doing, even though she said later she wouldn’t have wanted the Memoirs destroyed.50 At no point does any one voice the thought that Byron was a great writer, with a world-wide reputation, and that to destroy any work by him was unforgiveable. No-one present seems even to have thought in these terms, except possibly Moore. Hobhouse’s own motives for having the Memoirs destroyed were very mixed, and all questionable. Jealousy of Moore’s having been trusted with Byron’s reputation and legacy was a vital ingredient. A feeling, current at the time, that all memoirs and biographies were slightly indecent, may have played a small part in making him do 48: Quoted Dowden, op.cit., II pp.734-5. 49: RLL III p.330. 50: LLB p.44.

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what he did. But fear of being tarred with the same brush as his libertine friend, now, when he was, as a radical Whig M.P., almost respectable, was another motive. He had never approved of the low, satirical turn which Byron’s genius had taken in Beppo and Don Juan, and did not wish the world to see this work, a prose document ancillary to them. In Don Juan Byron had had a character who was clapped at Cadiz, which had been Hobhouse’s case – who knew what other mischievous indiscretions lurked in the Memoirs? Hobhouse didn’t want to know. But even these accumulated motives do not add up to, or explain, the hysteria which gripped Hobhouse over the weekend following the announcement of Byron’s death. Subconsciously he had developed an antipathy for Byron of the kind which Annabella had harboured consciously for years. As with Hamlet, whose idealisation of his father covers an unacknowledgeable depth of futile rivalry and hatred, Hobhouse’s grief, and his need to “protect Byron’s memory”, were a front covering a desire to destroy the Byron who had betrayed him. As Byron was already dead, destroying him was out of the question: so the one work by Byron which remained unpublished, his Memoirs, had to be destroyed as a substitute. I believe John Murray, Byron’s letters to whom are full of insults, harboured a similar hatred. Had Hobhouse of all people suggested that the Memoirs be placed securely for a sufficiently long period, until no embarrassment could be caused to anyone living, he might have been listened to. As it was, he became willing party to the act which has lowered its participants’ standing for ever in the eyes of posterity. Byron was no longer a person to these people: he was a totem, and with totems (unlike with icons), you can worship or revile, love or hate, abase yourself or get violent. Just as Drs. Bruno and Millingen at Missolonghi, who, aware that they had a world-celebrity, half-angel half-demon, in their power, subconsciously had to kill him, so the dreadful sextet at 50 Albemarle Street, knowing that they couldn’t kill the totem because he was already dead, did the next best thing, and destroyed his most important unpublished work. Moore’s Life, published by Murray, containing so many of his letters and journals, was an act of atonement. But Hobhouse didn’t want that published either.

BYRON’S DIRTY JOKES

“There are scattered indecencies, of course …” —Bernard Beatty.1

One wouldn’t know from many of the standard books on Don Juan that Don Juan contained any jokes at all, let alone dirty ones: the books are like oceanographic studies of the Atlantic, which fail to mention that the water in it is salt. But Byron’s intention was to write a poem that was “facetious” and “free” … It is called ‘Don Juan’, and is meant to be a little quietly facetious upon every thing. But I doubt whether it is not—at least, as far as it has yet gone—too free for these very modest days.2

… and facetiousness and freedom aren’t truly themselves without a leavening of good, healthy smut. I therefore offer a brief catalogue (which doesn’t aim at inclusiveness). Byron’s argument is that outrageous frankness and humour is part of the classical tradition in which young men are or should be educated: Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him, Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample, Catullus scarcely has a decent poem … … And then what proper person could be partial To all those nauseous Epigrams of Martial? (Don Juan I sts.42-3, condensed)

Unpublished. 1: Byron’s Don Juan (Barnes and Noble, 1985), p.112. 2: B. to Moore, September 19th 1818 (text from Moore’s Life II 197-200; BLJ VI 66-9).

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Don Juan’s descent into sin is helped by the fact that his mother won’t let him read such authors. Byron’s poem about him is, on the other hand, a continuation of that classical tradition. There would have to be some sex in a poem about Don Juan: but Byron’s intention – conscious or not – seems in addition to have been to do one-hundred-percent justice to all those bodily functions or malfunctions which “Romantic” poets ignored as being unpoetical (though not all novelists, and certainly not his favourite novelists, Cervantes and Smollett especially). You will find, I think, very little in Southey, Moore or Wordsworth about vomiting, defecation, urinating, constipation or indigestion (though you will in Swift, whom he admired). Byron, if you look closely, covers them all in Don Juan – as he had not in his “Romantic” poetry. Juan’s seasickness at the start of Canto II is a good example. Alp in The Siege of Corinth is just the kind of stressed-out person who would have indigestion (like Potemkin at VII st.36, or Nadir Shah at IX st.34);3 but the idiom of Siege is too elevated to accommodate such details – Don Juan’s idiom isn’t. It’s more Shakespearean. Compare Macbeth, who’s obviously constipated: What rhubarb, senna, or what purgative drug, Would scour these English hence? Hear’st thou of them?

Neither Marino Faliero nor Francis Foscari would express himself in this way: which is why nobody wants to put their plays on. The heaviest example of bodily malfunction in Don Juan is one which no-one can read aloud, let alone comprehend: it is the prescription, in medical Latin, given by his Russian doctors for the hero’s illness in Canto X: But here is one prescription out of many:4 “Sodæ-Sulphat 3.vi. 3.s. Mannæ Optim. “Aq. fervent. F. 3.ifs. 3ij. tinct. Sennæ. 3: Medical friends tell me that Nadir Shah’s symptoms indicate a massive duodenal ulcer. 4: I have adapted the phonetic transliteration of Frank Stiling and Bruno Meinecke in Byron’s DON JUAN, X, xli: The Explicator, March 1949, article 36). Only seskay in 322 appears doubtful: But here is one prescription out of many: “Soday sulfat drams six, drams sem man’yoptim, “Akk. fervent eff. seskay, drams two tinct. senny, “Howstus” (and here the Surgeon came and cupped him) “Ah. pulv. com. grans tray ipekak-u-anny ...

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“Haustus” (and here the Surgeon came and cupped him) “R. Pulv. Com. gr. iii. Ipecacuanhæ” (With more beside, if Juan had not stopped ’em,) “Bolus Potassæ Sulphuret. sumendus, “Et Haustus ter in die capiendus.” (Don Juan X st.41)

There are, contrary to what the first line says, two prescriptions in the stanza (the following is based on the analyses of Albers, Stiling and Meinecke, and on definitions in the OED): First prescription: “Sodæ-Sulphat 3.vi. 3.s. Mannæ Optim.: “Six drams of sodium sulphate and half a dram of the best manna” (manna: not the Biblical sign of grace, but a juice obtained from the Manna ash of Calabria or Sicily, and used as a mild laxative). “Aq. fervent. F. 3.ifs. 3ij. tinct. Sennæ./ “Haustus” ...: “An ounce and a half of boiling water and two drams of tincture of senna to be drunk” (senna: the dried leaves of the Cassia plant, long a popular laxative, as Macbeth knows; Haustus: short for fiat haustus, “let a draught be made”). Second prescription: “R. Pulv. Com. gr. iii. Ipecacuanhæ”: “Take compound powder, three grains of ipecac” (ipecac: from a South American Indian word – ipecacuanha – naming a plant which, taken, causes vomiting). “Bolus Potassæ Sulphuret. sumendus, / “Et Haustus ter in die capiendus.”: “One large pill (bolus) of sulphurated potash to be taken, and the whole dose swallowed three times a day”. The prescriptions would cause simultaneously a downward purge, vomiting, and a profuse sweat. They could – especially if taken both at once, and combined with letting blood via cupping (line 4) – prove fatal: if successful, they would certainly cure (temporarily) the illnesses both of Potemkin and of Nadir Shah. At Missolonghi, Byron was not able to stop ’em, as Juan is in line 6. Simultaneous upward and downward evacuation is not uncommon in the novels of Smollett. Byron is too much of a gentleman to be as frank as the author of Peregrine Pickle, so he couches his version of it – and his homage to Smollett – “in the obscurity of a learned language”, as Gibbon did. —————

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There can be no dirt in Childe Harold or the Turkish Tales, which are designed for a chaste and morally earnest readership, such as is found universally in English faculties. There was some in the original Childe Harold II:



Childe Harold with that chief held colloquy, Yet what they spake, it boots not to repeat, Converse may little charm strange ear, or eye; –  ‘—”†ƒ›•Š‡”‡•–‡†‹–Šƒ–•’ƒ…‹‘—••‡ƒ– Of Moslem luxury, the choice retreat Of sated Grandeur from the city’s noise, And were it humbler, it in sooth were sweet; But Peace abhorreth artificial joys, And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys. – (CHP II st.64, original)

For the explication of “… that spacious seat / Of Moslem luxury”, see elsewhere in this book. Suffice to say that, if Byron’s first thought is ever found in modern editions, it’s in very tiny print. I also argue elsewhere for a gay subtext to The Corsair; in the context of which such lines as … Down to the cabin [Conrad] with Gonsalvo bends, And there unfolds his plan, his means, and ends. (The Corsair, ll.585-6)

… attain new significance. When we’re told that “there was mounting in hot haste” on the eve of Waterloo, it’s horses that are being mounted – and in the correct cavalry fashion, by their riders (the word-play won’t stop: so consider the context): Ah! then and there was hurrying to and fro, And gathering tears, and tremblings of distress, And cheeks all pale, which but an hour ago Blushed at the praise of their own loveliness; And there were sudden partings, such as press The life from out young hearts, and choaking sighs Which ne’er might be repeated; who could guess If ever more should meet those mutual eyes? Since upon night so sweet such awful morn could rise. And there was mounting in hot haste … (CHP III sts. 24-5)

But Byron could easily impute this interpretation to the reader’s depraved mind. It’s when we get to Beppo that we’re more confident that our rude readings are right. A gondola …

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Byron's Dirty Jokes … glides along the water looking blackly, Just like a Coffin clapt in a Canoe, Where none can make out what you say or do. And up and down the long Canals they go And under the Rialto shoot along By night and day, all paces, swift or slow … (Beppo sts. 19-20)

The Canals aren’t just waterways, and the Rialto under which the gondolas shoot isn’t just the famous bridge. Editors from 1818 onwards have been anxious to avert our innocent eyes from some things in Beppo. Lines 39-40 (the couplet to Stanza 5) are in the fair copy For, bating Covent Garden, I can’t hit on A Place that’s called “Piazza” in Great Britain.

This becomes, in all editions For, bating Covent Garden, I can hit on No place that’s called “Piazza” in Great Britain.

Jerome McGann, in his Oxford edition, credits Hobhouse with the alterations ... which try (successfully, one must allow) to improve the sound relationships among the words.5 What he omits to say is that they also lessen the power of a joke, for “to hit on” was “to enjoy a sexual encounter at” (compare Don Juan IX st. 77, 6). Hobhouse had, in Byron’s company, enjoyed several such hits while at Venice, on, or off piazzas: ... although your poets are shy as elephants or camels of being seen in the act of procreation yet I have not unfrequently witnessed his lordship’s coupleting he writes to Murray, on 7th December, 1817.6 He may have thought that this particular couplet came a bit too close for comfort, for the Piazza Coffee House was indeed a “meeting-place” in Covent Garden; and so posterity has been denied it in its Byronic form ever since. Lines 575-6 (Stanza 72, couplet: 69, couplet in the first three editions) is always 5: CPW IV 483. Hobhouse’s diary records visits to Murray’s on February 4, 6, 10, 13 and 16 (B.L. Add. Mss.4724 54r-6r and 47235 1r). He goes principally to work on the Childe Harold proofs; there is no reason why he should not have been consulted over Beppo, too. He records that it is “out” on February 24, and that it is “making a great noise” on March 13. 6: John Murray Archive; see also E.H.Coleridge, II 315.

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No bustling Botherbys have they to show ’em “That charming passage in the last new poem.”

But both manuscripts give a singular, Botherby, and the fair copy underlines the name: No bustling Botherby have they to show ’em, “That Charming passage in the last new Poem!”

Poetry, says Byron (who ought to know), is a form of sexual display: but neither Sotheby (from whom Byron had stolen and travestied at least one idea – see Corsair chapter), nor his demure lady readers, have the nerve to carry the concept through to its logical conclusion. Murray, Gifford, Hobhouse and co., seem to have felt that the feelings of William Sotheby would be hurt less if the text implied that there was more than one of him; so this emendation has remained, too. Sotheby’s professed innocence of the charge which had occasioned the stanzas against him (it was one of slanderous marginalia to one of Byron’s books)7 had not lessened Byron’s determination to stick a pin through this old Blue-bottle8 and if Robert Southey is to be believed, the damage could well have been fatal: Poor Sotheby, he wrote to Grosvenor Bedford, those stanzas in Beppo will half kill him.9 Why we should still be deprived of the simplicity of Byron’s version is only clear if we adopt a necessitarian view, whereby once a compromise text has been created, history cannot atone.10 Byron concludes the poem with My pen is at the bottom of a page, Which being finished, here the story ends; ’Tis to be wished it had been sooner done, But Stories somehow lengthen when begun. – (Beppo, last lines; my italics)

Don Juan has rudeness in its Dedication: And then you overstrain yourself, or so, And tumble downward like the flying-fish 7: See BLJ VI 24 and 35-6. 8: BLJ V 252-3. 9: Bodleian M.S.English Letters d.47.86. 10: See McGann, A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (Chicago 1983) pp.34-5, 43-4, 51, 75 and 113. For a riposte, see ibid, p.126.

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Byron's Dirty Jokes Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, Bob, And fall, for Lack of moisture, quite adry, Bob! –11 (Don Juan, Dedication, st.3 5-8)

Here, Byron equates writing poetry with sex, as he did with Sotheby, maintaining Southey to be no good at either. Southey goes through the motions, but can’t deliver. Later, the poem is decorated with casual indiscretions: Wives in their husbands’ absences grow subtler, And daughters sometimes run off with the Butler. (Don Juan III 22 7-8)

One of them seems a macho boast on Byron’s part, implying Mariana Segati to have been lucky, as well as inexhaustible: And Oh! Ye Gentlemen who have already Some chaste liaison of the kind; I mean An honest friendship with a married Lady, The only thing of this Sort ever seen To last, of all Connections the most steady And the true Hymen (the first’s but a Screen) Yet for all that keep not too long away – I’ve known the absent wronged four times a-day. – (Don Juan III st.25)

In Canto I, Antonia plays a variation on the “long Canals” joke from Beppo: “Fly – Juan – Fly! for heaven’s sake – not a word – “The door is open – you may yet slip through “The passage you so often have explored –” (Don Juan I 182, 3-5)

The real subject of Don Juan is, as we all know, not masculine prowess but female appetite. The gentlemanly Byron is rarely explicit about this theme, except at the opening of Canto VI, where his wordplay “whirls and eddies” just as – he would assert – his subject does: There is a tide too in the Affairs of Women “Which taken at the flood leads,” – God knows where, Those Navigators must be able Seamen Whose charts lay down its currents to a hair; 11: adry, Bob!: a dry bob was in Regency slang intercourse without ejaculation.

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Not all the reveries of Jacob Behmen With its strange whirls and eddies can compare: – Men with their heads reflect on this and that – But women with their hearts, or Heaven knows what! (Don Juan VI st.2)

Some fun is derived from the Russian surnames in Canto VII: “Arseniew of modern Greece”, “Chrematoff”, “Koklofty”, and “Koclobski” all seem calculated to produce blushes. A deliberate – or careless – or just ignorant – misreading of Islam leads to the following, from Canto VIII: The eldest was a true and tameless Tartar, As great a scorner of the Nazarene As ever Mahomet picked out for a Martyr, Who only saw the black eyed girls in green, That make the beds of those who won’t take quarter On Earth, in Paradise; and when once seen, Those Houris, like all other pretty creatures,12 Do just whate’er they please, by dint of features. And what they pleased to do with the young Khan In Heaven, I know not, nor pretend to guess; But doubtless they prefer a fine young Man To tough old Heroes, and can do no less; And that’s the cause, no doubt why – if we scan A Field of Battle’s ghastly Wilderness – For one rough, weather-beaten Veteran body, You’ll find ten thousand handsome Coxcombs bloody. (Don Juan VIII, sts.111-12)

But I find on the Internet that houris can have no preferences: Contrary to popular belief houris are available not only to martyrs but to all Muslim men that go to paradise. They do not have the mental capacity to choose what they will and will not do with their bodies. Allah created houris to serve the Muslim men; therefore, they do not know a world outside this sexual servitude. They must allow master to penetrate them

12: the black eyed girls in green ... Houris: the maidens who await in Paradise those men who have died in the cause of Islam: They shall sit with bashful, darkeyed virgins, as chaste as the sheltered eggs of ostriches (Qur’an, Chapter 37); To dark-eyed houris We shall wed them (Chapter 52); ... theirs shall be the dark-eyed houris, chaste as hidden pearls: a guerdon for their deeds (Chapter 56).

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Byron's Dirty Jokes whenever he wants. They must smile and enjoy it, because the houris do not have the mental faculties to choose otherwise.13

So much for Byron’s vaunted inwardness with the Orient: though the passage does fit in with his poem’s theme, which is womanly lust. But houris are only metaphors for spiritual contentment. As if to balance the above, Byron often assays phallic jokes: This fellow, being six foot high, could raise A kind of phantasy proportionate In the then Sovereign of the Russian people, Who measured men, as you would do a Steeple. (Don Juan VII 37 5-8)

The well-employed women of St James’s Street lead to a subtler joke of this kind when Juan gets to London (it’s derived indirectly from A New Way to Pay Old Debts); my italics: They reached th’hotel; forth streamed from the front door A tide of well-clad waiters, and around The mob stood, and, as usual, several score Of those pedestrian Paphians, who abound In decent London, when the daylight’s o’er; Commodious but immoral, they are found Useful, like Malthus, in promoting marriage; But Juan now is stepping from his carriage Into one of the sweetest of hotels, Especially for foreigners, and mostly For those whom Favour or whom Fortune swells … (Don Juan XI sts.30-1)

At Norman Abbey, not even the seemingly neuter Sir Henry Amundeville is immune: But there was something wanting on the whole – I don’t know what, and therefore cannot tell – Which pretty women – the sweet souls! – call Soul; Certes it was not body – he was well Proportioned as a poplar or a pole; A handsome Man-that human miracle – And in each circumstance of love or War 13:

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs Had still preserved his perpendicular.

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(Don Juan XIV st.71)

There’s even one in The Vision of Judgement, from which carnality is otherwise banished. Writing of the Peripatetic Damned, Byron has: They are proud of this – as very well they may – It being a sort of knighthood – or gilt key Stuck in their loins – or like to an “Entré” Up the back stairs, or such Free Masonry; I borrow my comparisons from Clay, Being clay myself. Let not those Spirits be Offended with such base low likenesses – We know their posts are nobler far than these. (TVOJ st.54)

I think that’s enough for the time being. Anyone writing about Byron’s ottava rima work has to take in the delight he has in indecency – writing as he is in the tradition of Rabelais, Sterne, Smollett, and Fielding – and anyone writing about his serious, “Romantic” work must bear in mind those aspects of his sensibility which he’s deliberately keeping repressed.

BYRON’S “DIVIDED LOYALTIES”

To keep one creed’s a task grown quite Herculean – Is it not so, my Tory, Ultra-Julian? (Don Juan, Dedication, final couplet)

Thus Byron both mocks Southey’s supposed “apostasy”, and at the same time asks for sympathetic confirmation of his sense that apostasy’s opposite, consistency, is very hard to maintain. Being, as we say politely, “of a mobile temperament” – “of an antithetical nature” – “well able to see both or all sides of every issue” – often got Byron into trouble in situations where he had friends in opposing camps. My sad argument here is that, in the final upshot, he invariably gave in to the establishment line, which involved him in acts of treachery to his radical / revolutionary / freethinking friends.

1: Shelley v. Gifford Byron rarely praised Shelley’s poetry, and never betrayed any inkling that he had an ideal Shelley in his mind, moral, poetical, or social, (like the ideal Byron Shelley had in his mind) which was perpetually betrayed by the reality. Byron took people as they came. Medwin reports his high opinion of Shelley: There’s Shelley has more poetry in him than any man living; and if he were not so mystical, and would not write Utopias and set himself up as a Reformer, his right to rank as a poet, and very highly too, could not fail of being acknowledged.1

But he diverted the energy he might have spent on promoting his friend’s poetry into publically defending his moral reputation – a reputation, however, which in private he held in no high regard. There is comedy in the double face he had to keep up, on the one hand in correspondence with Shelley, and on the other with Shelley’s enemies. Unpublished. 1: Medwin p.235.

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He was forced into a strange hypocrisy, by the need, on the one hand to keep in with Shelley, and on the other to keep in with his more conservative London friends. The problem surfaced early in the matter of who was to read the proofs of Childe Harold III. Byron seems to have told Shelley that he wanted him to read the proofs: evidence is in a letter from Shelley to Murray of October 30th 1816: Dear Sir / I observe with surprise that you have announced the appearance of Childe Harold & the Prisoner of Chillon for so early a day as the 23d of November. I should not do my duty to Lord Byron who entrusted me with the Mss. of his Poems, if I did not remind you, that it was his particular desire that I should revise the proofs before publication. – When I had the pleasure of seeing you in London, I think I stated his Lordship’s wishes on this subject to you, remarking at the same time that his wishes did not arise from a persuasion that I should pay more attention to its accuracy than any person whom you might select; but because he communicated it to me immediately after composition; & did me the honor to entrust to my discretion, as to whether certain particular expressions should be retained or changed. All that was required, was that I should see the proofs before they were finally committed to the press. – I wrote to you, some weeks since, to this purpose. I have received no answer. – Some mistake must have arisen, in what manner I cannot well conceive. You must have forgotten or misunderstood my explanations; by some accident you cannot have received my letter. – Do me the favor of writing by return of Post; & informing me what intelligence I am to give Lord Byron respecting the commission with which I was entrusted.2

Shelley’s frustration, as part-inspirer of the poem, is clear. Reading between the lines one can tell he knew that Murray had received his letter, and that he was being frozen out by the Tories at Albemarle Street. What would he have felt, in this early stage of their acquaintance, had he known that on August 28th 1816 Byron had actually written to Murray in the following shuffling terms:

2: LPBS I 511.

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Byron’s “Divided Loyalties” Dear Sir – The Manuscript (containing the third Canto of Childe Harold – the Castle of Chillon &c. &c.)3 is consigned to the care of my friend Mr. Shelley – who will deliver this letter along with it. – Mr. Gifford will perhaps be kind enough to read it over; – I know not well to whom to consign the correction of the proofs – nor indeed who would be good natured enough to overlook it in its progress – as I feel very anxious that it should be published with as few errata as possible. – – Perhaps – my friend Mr. Moore (if in town) would do this. – – If not – Mr. S. will take it upon himself, – and in any case – he is authorized to act for me {in} treating with you &c. &c. on this subject. – – – – – –4

Contrary to what he has assured Shelley, he lays all three possible editors before Murray in a seemingly random way, and appears to be “leaving the choice to him”. But Moore had never been given such a job before, and his name is thrown in thus casually, firstly to make the publisher’s choice seem wider, thereby laying less stress on Shelley, and secondly, in reality, to narrow the choice down – for if the hitherto-unused Shelley is equal with the hitherto-unused Moore, Murray will instinctively turn to Gifford, who had proof-read all of Byron’s work up to this point. Murray’s reaction to the atheistical, democratical Shelley could have been predicted: I am sure that the person who was to have been your supervisor is a perfect wretch – without any homogenious qualities to compensate.5

On October 15th 1816 Byron had further written to Murray: If I recollect rightly – you told me that Mr. Gifford had kindly undertaken to {correct} the press (at my request) during my absence – at least I hope so – it will add to my many obligations to that Gentleman. – – – –6

3: This manuscript is Claire Claremont’s fair copy (NLS 43326). Mary Godwin’s and B.’s own fair copies were taken home by Davies, and lost until 1976. 4: B. to Murray, August 28th 1816 (text from NLS Ms.43488; BLJ V 90-1). 5: Murray to B., January 22nd 1817 (text from NLS Ms.43495; LJM 187-91). 6: B. to Murray, October 15th 1816 (text from NLS Ms.43488; BLJ V 115-16).

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It’s clear, in fact, that he’d intended to have Gifford correct the proofs all the time, and that to Shelley he was just being polite.

2: Hobhouse v. Gifford The political differences between Byron and his revered editor became embarrassing. Hobhouse’s pro-Napoleonic Letters from Paris was reviewed in the “January” 1816 number of the Quarterly Review,7 which came out on May 17th. The reviewer (John Wilson Croker, with Gifford “embellishing”), affected to interpret it as an exercise in Rabelaisian irony, parodying the language and posturings of a sincere Bonapartist: ... it is not possible to imitate with more force and accuracy the style of these wretched fools and rogues, than Mr Hobhouse has done; the very anger with which we perused the greater part of his book, is one of the best proofs we can adduce of the success of his satire, and the perfect illusion which his irony created.8

Croker, doubtless with Gifford’s encouragement, maintains this artifice for nine pages, mocking many moments which we know Hobhouse to have recorded with intensity and anguish; but finally says that even such a skilful satire sickens at last, and labels it, with bold tautology ... tedious, dull, and laboriously impudent9

Hobhouse had his revenge in Letters’ third edition of 1817, dedicated to Byron. In his Dedication, he included an attack on Gifford, supposed by him sole author of the Quarterly notice.10 He must have known it would vex Byron. Byron was not, in fact, an admirer of Hobhouse’s tomes – writing to Scrope Davies (à propos of a book which was never written) he refers to “H[obhouse]’s future Elephantine quarto”.11 In his Dedication Hobhouse wrote: Mr. Gifford, when, in times past, he dealt with such words as candour, honesty, justice, liberality, and feeling, a sense of duty, and love of decorum, could not contemplate that he was to be preferred, when full of years and honours, to be 7: Quarterly Review XXVIII pp.443-52. 8: Ibid, p.444. 9: Ibid, p.452. 10: See BLJ V 169 n2 and LJ IV 53. 11: BLJ XI 164.

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Byron’s “Divided Loyalties” the Coryphæus of clerks and secretaries, the almoner and apostle of apostate patriots and poet laureats, the sifter of the sweepings of Whitehall and Downing-street, the director of the Renegado Repository!12

Associating Gifford with Southey was logical enough, though there was in fact no love lost between the two men: Southey referred to Gifford, because of his interventionist editing, as “The Chief-Castrator”.13 But Byron was embarrassed by the potential conflict which Hobhouse had provoked, and felt it necessary to stay hors de concours. In one of his few references to Letters, he writes to Murray on February 15th 1817: Of Mr. H’s quarrel with the Quarterly R. – I know very little – – except {Barrow’s} article itself – which was certainly harsh enough – but I quite agree that it would have been better not to answer – particularly after Mr. W. W. who never more will trouble you – trouble you. – – – I have been uneasy – because Mr. H told me that his letter or preface14 was to be addressed to me, – now he & I are friends of many years – I have many obligations to him – & he none to me – which have not been cancelled & more than repaid – but Mr. G. & I are friends – also, and he has moreover been literarily so – through thick & thin – in despite of difference of years – morals – habits – & even politics (which {last} would I believe if they were in heaven divide the Trinity – & {put} the Holy Ghost out of {place}) and therefore I feel in a very awkward situation between the two Mr. G. & my friend H. – & can only wish that they had no differences – or that such as they have were accomodated. – The answer I have not seen – for it is odd.15

It is a characteristic statement of political fence-sitting, a vivid example of my theme: wanting to please both friends, Byron can please neither. The gap between the conservative Gifford and the radical Hobhouse, which Byron regrets so, never could be closed, any more than could those between the confidence of Hobhouse’s radical Whiggism and the insecurity of Byron’s political tightrope-walking.

12: Letters 3rd edn., pp xx - xxi. 13: Bodleian Eng. Letters d. 47. 233. 14: H.’s Substance of some Letters … from Paris. 15: B. to Murray, February 15th 1817 (text from NLS Ms.43489; BLJ V 169-70).

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Another sad fact is that, although he received all Hobhouse’s actual letters from Paris (with their frequent descriptions of Napoleon, in which Hobhouse was sure Byron would be interested,) Byron answered none of them. But had he not written, What strange tidings from that Anakim of anarchy— Buonaparte! Ever since I defended my bust of him at Harrow against the rascally time-servers, when the war broke out in 1803, he has been a “Heros de Roman” of mine—on the continent; I don’t want him here.16

3: All Byron’s London friends v. Leigh Hunt It’s rarely discussed, but Byron actually sabotaged The Liberal. Using Douglas Kinnaird as a hit-man who could always be relied on to take a hint – and take action rather further than the mere hint might have suggested – he insisted on The Island and The Age of Bronze being published separately, saying, in the teeth of the evidence, that they were too long for the journal. In theory he may have concurred with Shelley and Leigh Hunt that “liberalism” celebrated talent and attacked the strong – though I find the word “liberalism” nowhere in his correspondence. If he did, the class-based embarrassment which, upon Shelley’s death, he felt at being associated with Leigh Hunt alone (though he had been embarrassed enough by his association with Shelley), overcame any political or literary idealism he may have felt. When he writes to Kinnaird … Enclosed is the 14th. Canto of D.J. – the thirteenth was sent a few days ago – also – the Age of Bronze (proof to be compared carefully with the M.S.S. by the publisher) – and a poem in 4 Cantos called the Island – this makes the fourth packet. – Please to acknowledge arrivals of the same. – Mr. J. H. writes to his brother that you desired him to stop the L. – You forget that we have no power to stop the publication of a work over which we have no control – there is the Pulci translation for his next number if he pleases. – The things I have sent to you – are not to be inserted in the Liberal – but it does not follow – that that Journal is to cease – and L. H. says that it will do him great harm if that

16: London Journal, November 17th 1814.

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Byron’s “Divided Loyalties” journal stops. – If there must be a sacrifice – I would rather risk myself than other people …17

… he speaks with Byronically forked tongue. “… we have no power to stop the publication of a work over which we have no control” ignores the fact that in withholding his poems, they show absolute control. All the stress of and from the Hunt brothers was as nothing beside such things as this advice, from Moore: I am most anxious to know that you mean to emerge out of the Liberal. It grieves me to urge any thing so much against Hunt’s interest; but I should not hesitate to use the same language to himself, were I near him. I would, if I were you, serve him in every possible way but this – I would give him (if he would accept of it) the profits of the same works, published separately – but I would not mix myself up in this way with others. I would not become a partner in this sort of miscellaneous “pot au feu,” where the bad flavour of one ingredient is sure to taint all the rest. I would be, if I were you, alone, single-handed, and, as such, invincible.18

Murray was franker still: Werner and the Mystery I can & will publish – and immediately – for I observe the Announcement of “The Loves of the Angels” a poem by Moore wch must be on the same subject as the Mystery – and because they will diminish (as far at least as your Lordship is concerned,) the universal disappointment and condemnation which has followed the publication of the first number of the “Liberal” – do not let others deceive you – I pledge my honour to the truth of what I tell you, that never since I have been a publisher did I ever observe such a universal outcry as this work has occasioned & it is deemed to be no less dull than wickedly intended – finding all this attributed to you & moreover that you were accused of mercenary motives – I felt it a duty that I owed you to read that part of your Letter in which you communicate the cause of & your motives for contributing to this work to every gentleman who is in the habit of visiting at my house. The consequence of which has 17: B. to Kinnaird, March 10th 1823 (text from Ms. NLS TD 3079, f.65; BLJ X 121). 18: from Moore to Byron, February 1823 (Ms. not found; text from Moore’s Life; Dowden I 514).

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been the instant insertion of the inclosed paragraph by Mr John Hunt in his Examiner of Sunday last.19 You see the result of being forced into contact with wretches who take for granted that every one must be as infamous as themselves – really Lord Byron it is dreadful to think upon your association with such outcasts from Society, it is impossible, I am sure, that you can conceive any thing like the horrid sensation created in the mind of the public by this connexion, unless you were here to feel it.20

Most worrying would have been Kinnaird’s warning: you send me two letters of Murray21 – The long one I really think to be worthy your attention – I do believe he speaks the truth – I pretend not to judge, or obtrude any opinion of my own between you & Mr Hunt – But I certainly have not heard a good word of the liberal – The Vision is not felt as it deserves – I mean its talent – The reason of this I really believe to be that the Public is sick of religious disputes – & – blasphemy & all that stuff –22

Byron writes a defiant letter: I care nothing for what may be the consequence critical or otherwise – all the bullies on earth shall not prevent me from writing what I like – & publishing what I write – “coute qui coute” – if they had let me alone – I probably should not have continued beyond the five first [cantos of Don Juan] – as it is – there shall be such a poem – as has 19: Newspaper cutting enclosed: “THE LIBERAL. / In the First Number of this work, just published, there ought to have been a Preface to the Vision of Judgment, which would have explained the full spirit of one or two passages that may be misconstrued, and shewn more completely how Mr. Southey has subjected himself and his cause to this sort of attack,—if indeed such evidence be wanting. The author was somewhat anxious on the former point, lest he should be thought to bear harder than he wished on the late Sovereign. The latter, perhaps, may be explained at once by quoting and applying to Mr. Southey the famous line about “fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.” But the fact is, that for reasons best known to himself, Mr. Murray the bookseller, who was to have been the original publisher of the Vision, contrived to evade sending the preface to the present publisher.” 20: Murray to B., October 29th 1822 (text from NLS Ms.43497; LJM 455-6). 21: Murray to B., November 5th and 18th. 22: Kinnaird to B., December 5th 1822 (text from NLS Ms.43456).

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Byron’s “Divided Loyalties” not been since Ariosto – in length – in satire – in imagery – and in what I please. –23

… but he would publish, with such defiance, “alone, single-handed, and, as such, invincible” – not in the company of Leigh Hunt, in the pages of The Liberal. Had he published The Island or The Age of Bronze in The Liberal, the journal would hardly have embodied a model of political behaviour in any case: for The Island fudges the causes of the mutiny on the Bounty, thanks to Byron’s unwillingness to inspire real naval insubordination (“… I have two things to avoid – the first that of running foul of my own ‘Corsair’ and style – so as to produce repetition and monotony – and the other not to run counter to the reigning stupidity altogether – otherwise they will say that I am eulogising Mutiny”).24 And The Age of Bronze is done, only in part ironically, from the unscrupulous perspective of the absentee landlord which he had by then become: “And will they not repay the treasures lent? / No – down with everything, and up with Rent!” (ll.630-1). But I don’t think self-consciousness about being politically conservative was his reason for abandoning the venture.

23: B. to Kinnaird, March 31st 1823 (text from NLS Ms.43454; BLJ X 132-3). 24: B. to Leigh Hunt, January 25th 1823; BLJ X 90.

BEING “BYRON’S BEST FRIEND”

John Cam Hobhouse was in love with Byron without being gay – thus having the worst of both worlds. Here is Byron, reporting to Hobhouse on his own love-affair, apologising for doing so, and then announcing the birth of a child from a previous one: My own amours go on very tranquilly – she [Marianna Segati] plagues me less than any woman I ever met with – and I am indebted to her for the pleasantest month I can reckon this many a day. – I know you hate that sort of thing – so I will say no more about love & the like – except that in a letter from Sy I hear that C is about to produce a young “A. and I.1

Here is that same “C”, summing-up Hobhouse: Alone I study Plutarch’s lives wherein I find nothing but excitements to virtue & abstinence: with Mary & Shelley the scene changes but from the contemplation of the virtues of the dead to those of the living. I have no Hobhouse by my side to dispirit me with an easy & impudent declaration of “the villany of all mankind” which I can construe into nothing but an attempt to cover his conscious unworthiness.2

Hobhouse’s “conscious unworthiness” may have had something to do with his own sex-life. At Calais, he records: Displaced a waiter who was looking at my girl undressing – wrote letter to Sophie – bed, good.3

In Paris, a year earlier:

Unpublished. 1: B. to Hobhouse, December 19th 1816 (text from B.L.Add.Mss.42093 ff.12-15; BLJ V 142-4). 2: Claire Claremont to B., January 12th 1818 (text from NLS Acc.12604 / 4177B; Stocking I 109-111). 3: Hobhouse diary, Monday July 30th 1816.

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Being “Byron’s Best Friend” Going through the rue Richelieu I was aboarded by a woman who made me several singular propositions à la Justine, beginning with the most brutal. I came home and wrote a political letter to nobody.4

Whether he accepted any of the singular propositions, he doesn’t say. Hobhouse often “displaces” other men: the waiter at Calais was not alone. Here is part of his diary for when he nearly died, lost in a Greek spar cave: Loitering by this spring in admiration of the magnificent scene, determined to make the best of the way out, as the torches began to waste, but after exploring this labyrinth again a short time, found ourselves again at the fountain side, where the old guide confessed that he had forgot the intricacies of these caverns. However, just as the last fir stick was consuming, we saw light, and taking a baton that I observed in the ground, I laid about our conductor’s back, and returned thanks for our exit from this cave, where we must have perished, as I find on enquiring at the village that there are within it a thousand chambers with suites of subterranean apartments which they believe to extend through the centre of the mountain to their village.5

Here, in the aftermath of the death of his brother Benjamin at Quatre Bras: I dined at Massinot’s, came home, wrote to my father. My servant Parsons was out – he came home late, and answering me in a manner which I thought pointed at my misfortune, I struck him. He was seized with a fit, first of crying, then of a kind of epilepsy, and became insensible. I called up the house and got a French physician – he remained in a sad state, the fruit of my passion, all night, I watching him until five in the morning …6

The Marquis de Sade, author of Justine, interests Hobhouse a lot: I called, after writing bad French against Sismondi and [ ], on Madame de Coigny, where I saw Lascour in bad spirits about the Royal Volunteers, of which he is one.

4: Ibid., Tuesday May 2nd 1815. 5: Ibid., Sunday January 21st 1810. 6: Ibid., Friday July 7th 1815.

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He told a story in today’s Journal de l’Empire of a Captain Saint-Claire of the line, member of the Legion of Honour, who stabbed himself before a council of war upon having sentence pronounced upon him for murdering a girl – Keric Macker, called “La Belle Hollandaise”. The judge said “St Claire, vous avez manqué de l’honneur”. The young man jumped from the bench and said, “Jamais!” – then stabbed himself – he took off his Cross of the Legion of Honour himself, and was carried away dying to the Abbaye. His counsel, in pleading, said a report had gone abroad that his client had murdered the girl upon the principles which had entered into the head of that monster who had finished his disgraceful existence amongst the madmen of Charenton. This is the famous de Sade, author of Justine. I have little doubt of St Claire being a disciple of de Sade’s, and the advocate, mentioning the matter, shows how far the thing has gone in France. de Sade gave Courthande to a whole party at a ball, and then debauched his sister-in-law. In the Fauxbourg St Antoine there was a club à la Justine, which was discovered, but for the honour of the nation all the details were concealed, and except de Sade, who I believe was then sent to Charenton, nobody punished.7

In Milan, he and Byron learn this from Henri Beyle (the future Stendhal): I have every reason to think that Beyle is a trustworthy person – he is so reported by Breme – however he has a cruel way of talking and looks, and is, a sensualist. He said that about two years ago he heard the Marquis de Sade at Charenton cry out to poor men in the street, “Bonjour messieurs – bonjour – je vous ferai tous secreter vifs!”8 just as if he had said, “I’ll come and call on you!” – his lust was cruelty – he might have been beheaded a hundred times for the murder of women. He used to tie them down and make a wound in their thighs as near as possible to the great artery – as they expired his enjoyment was consummated. Napoleon did not choose to punish him except by putting him in a madhouse – and under the old regime he was accounted of too old a family for punishment. Mr de Duffond9 mentions his being found with a woman covered with cuts – his excuse was that he was applying healing salve to her – and his salve was

7: Ibid., Friday May 19th 1815. 8: The words implied that de Sade would give the men a good time. 9: Duffond (“Du Fond”?) unidentified.

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Being “Byron’s Best Friend” leaking – he debutted10 by sending his brother out of the way, giving his brother’s wife [ ] at a ball, and then carrying her off, after every violence, to Florence, where he sold her to the Grand Duke Leopold.11

Hobhouse should know a cruel sensualist when he meets one: Walked about with Kinnaird – called on Bruce, whose father is dead. Called on a Piece with Kinnaird. She poor girl said she should not care if she died tomorrow – I asked her why? – She said “I am tired!!!” This is the best reason I think, and I am sure this poor creature was sincere in what she said.12

We know Byron possessed a copy of Justine: Lady Melbourne is in a fright. She is sure that Lady Byron has seen some of her letters to Lord Byron, for Caroline Lamb has quoted some passages to her, so that Caroline Lamb must be the worthy associate of her Ladyship ... I think she may have looked at the letters without their having been shown to her, for I know she looked at a trunk in which Byron kept his black drop and Justine – Mrs Leigh confessed this.13

Those who would suggest a fixation with de Sade on Byron’s part (for which this is all the evidence there is)14 should consider the role Hobhouse perhaps played in bringing de Sade to whatever little attention Byron paid to him. The chameleonic Byron had this genial but stunted invert in his company throughout the composition of Childe Harold I, II and IV – but not III: see the essay elsewhere. Hobhouse’s admiration for the fourth canto blossomed in his prolix and unfocussed volume Historical Illustrations to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He thought, however, that Don Juan shouldn’t be published (despite assuring Byron “you were as superior in the burlesque as {in} the heroic to all competitors and even perhaps had found your real forte in this singular

10: Word unclear. It implies that this was de Sade’s first venture into perversion. 11: Hobhouse diary, Wednesday October 23rd 1816. 12: Ibid., Friday April 7th 1820. 13: Ibid., Friday April 26th 1816. 14: See Benita Eisler, Byron Child of Passion Fool of Fame (Knopf 1999), pp.477 and 479; and Piya-Pal Lapinski, Byron avec Sade, in Hopps (ed.), Byron’s Ghosts (Liverpool 2013), p.132.

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style”),15 and, having seen Cantos I and II through the press, ignored the rest until Sunday June 1st 1828, when he records: Read Cantos X, XI and XII of Don Juan for the first time – a very extraordinary performance – or rather, a work indicative of a very extraordinary mind. Byron was a great humourist.

Fear of humiliation now that he was an M.P. may have contributed to this inhibition about reading his friend’s greatest work. When at Don Juan II 81, 7-8, he found that the Master’s Mate is spared being eaten because of “a small present made to him at Cadiz, / By general Subscription of the Ladies. – – –” he could not but remember the clap which he had himself caught in the same city. Who knows what other irrecoverable in-jokes Don Juan contains? ————— Hobhouse and Byron had initially been collaborators. Hobhouse wrote the following lines, about William Lisle Bowles, in the first edition of English Bards (they were lines 385 et seq.): Stick to thy sonnets, man! – at least they sell. Or take the only path that open lies For modern worthies who would hope to rise: Fix on some well-known name, and, bit by bit, Pare off the merits of his worth and wit: On each alike employ the critic’s knife, And when a comment fails, prefix a life; Hint certain failings, faults before unknown, Review forgotten lies, and add you own; Let no disease, let no misfortune ’scape, And print, if luckily deformed, his shape: Thus shall the world, quite undeceived at last, Cleave to their present wits, and quit their past; Bards once revered no more with favour view, But give their modern sonneteers their due; Thus with the dead may living merit cope, Thus Bowles may triumph o’er the shape of Pope.

15: H. to B., January 5th 1819 (text from NLS Ms.43443; Byron’s Bulldog 25661).

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They don’t appear in any subsequent edition. Just as Byron was writing Hints from Horace, Hobhouse was doing his own version of the Ars Poetica. On learning of Byron’s version, he destroyed it. Part of the tragicomedy of the friends’ correspondence throughout 1811-12 is Hobhouse’s slow realisation – as he writes his Journey through Albania – is that Byron’s own prose notes to Childe Harold I and II are getting longer and longer, and that his own book, conceived in part as a prose companion to Byron’s verse, is gradually finding in it, not a complement, but a rival. But the greatest difference between them lay in their attitude to Napoleon, whom Hobhouse admired as a real person (rather as he admired Byron) but whom Byron mythologised out of existence. Here Hobhouse writes from Paris during the Hundred Days (where Byron had refused to accompany him): This wicked war is about to begin in spite of every consideration of prudence and common justice – The Emperor in his address to the address of the chamber of deputies on Sunday last said “I go this night” – Of course he went – my good wishes attend him or rather his cause – Indeed I am not sure that a sneeking kindness for the man himself has not lately grown upon me partly owing to the gigantic perils with which he & his are threatened, partly owing to several anecdotes which do infinite credit to his heart or at least his temper and conduct, and partly also because I have remarked myself in him one or two little personal peculiarities of behaviour & appearance which recall to me the person whom in spite of all late neglects & forgetfulnesses I love plus quam oculis16 – When on his throne on last Wednesday at the opening of his parliament his employment during the tedious hour occupied by the members of the two houses taking individually the oath of allegiance was opening a little silver box and helping himself out of it to some cut lozenges or for ought I know strips of tobacco – His pensive pale face the sentimental quiet working of his lips and a little labouring with his bosom, added to the box and its contents made me think myself in Albany opposite your arm chair – Whatever can be done by military genius and military enthusiasm, he and his army will perform – The attachment which that man inspires is perfectly incomprehensible as are the means vastly singular to which he has recourse to secure this attachment. I 16: This phrase (“more than [my] eyes”) is pure Hobhouse; it echoes, most unfortunately, Goneril’s “Sir, I love you more than words can wield the matter; / Dearer than eye-sight, space, and liberty …” (King Lear, I i).

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saw him with my own eyes at a great review in the court of the Tuilleries walk up to a common soldier who had a petition in his hand & was presenting arms to him, and after laughing and talking to him for two minutes at least end by pulling him smartly by the nose …17

Byron (who answered none of Hobhouse’s letters from Paris) was as indifferent to Bonaparte’s “pensive pale face the sentimental quiet working of his lips and a little labouring with his bosom” as he was to the mundane compromises of Napoleon’s abortive second coming, which Hobhouse describes in detail. For him, the Emperor was a being of myth – elevated to that status as surely as he and “that ninny”18 Mr Ekenhead would be to the same level as Leander (see Don Juan II 105, 8): he was like Tamberlane (Byron seems deliberately to confuse Timour with his prisoner, Bajazet: Bonaparte could have resembled the one, but in fact resembled the other); he was like Prometheus – like Satan himself! Thou Timour! in his Captive’s cage What thoughts will there be thine, While brooding in thy prisoned rage? But one – “The World was mine!” Unless, like he of Babylon, All Sense is with thy Sceptre gone, Life will not long confine That Spirit poured so widely forth – So long obeyed – so little worth! Or, like the thief of fire from heaven, Wilt thou withstand the shock? And share with him, the unforgiven, His vulture and his rock! Foredoomed by God – by man accurst, And that last act, though not thy worst, The very Fiend’s arch mock; He in his fall preserved his pride, And, if a mortal, had as proudly died!19

17: Hobhouse to B., June 13th 1815 (text from NLS Ms.43441; Byron’s Bulldog 216-18). 18: Hobhouse to B., October 6th 1810 (text from NLS Ms.43441 f.7; Byron’s Bulldog 49-54). 19: Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, sts. 15-16.

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However, Hobhouse’s loving equation “Byron=Bonaparte” seems to have sunk in. When Byron was stressed almost to breaking-point by the failure of his marriage early in 1816, Hobhouse’s diary records that he … has gone to the length of strutting about in his peer’s robes, and saying he was like Bonaparte, and the greatest man in the world, not excepting Bonaparte.20

This fantasy – whether or not it originates in Hobhouse’s “plus quam oculis” – eventually produces the following in Don Juan: But Juan was my Moscow, and Faliero My Leipsic, and my Mont Saint Jean seems Cain; “La Belle Alliance” of dunces down at zero, Now that the Lion’s fall’n, may rise again; But I will fall at once as fell my Hero, Nor reign at all, or as a Monarch reign, Or to some lonely Isle of Jailors go, With turncoat Southey as my turnkey Lowe. (Don Juan XI st.56)

… which is characteristically Don Juan-ish in that it’s a joke, except that it’s not. When his mother-in-law died, Byron was delighted, partly because he’d hated her, but principally because it enabled him to sign his letters “N.B.” (in fact “Noel Byron”). His signature, hitherto usually “B[scrawl]” becomes much neater and more confident, as if he has at last discovered his true identity. ————— Nothing gave Hobhouse greater pleasure than separating Byron from his women (he heard about Byron’s engagement not from Byron, but from Scrope Davies: it seems Byron was shy of announcing it to him). The long day on which he “interposed his body between” Byron and Caroline Lamb is well-known from Leslie Marchand’s biography, which simply

20: Hobhouse diary, Monday February 12th 1816 (Edited from Berg Volume 4 (1 Jan 1816-5 Apr 1816); Broughton Holograph Diaries, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations).

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duplicates his diary.21 And on February 19th 1816 – in the middle of the separation proceedings – Annabella wrote to Dr Lushington, her lawyer: Dear Sir / I have had some information as to Mr Hobhouse which I consider of importance – When he came down to Seaham with Lord Byron at the time of my marriage, a day or two previous to it, – he spoke in terms of strong reprobation of Lord Byron – to Mr Noel, the Clergyman by whom I was married – wishing him to break off the match – and saying that those persons were much to blame who trusted their child with such a man, speaking particularly of his violence as being unsafe. This has just been repeated to me from a quarter which I cannot doubt – – – The day, one after my marriage, Lord Byron – said to me, ‘Hobhouse knows I am a Villain’ – Mr Noel said it was too late – and declined interference – From this fact I leave you to draw inferences.

Hobhouse is unlikely to have made such a gesture without Byron’s instigation. For all this loyalty, in 1818 Hobhouse received a generous puff in the Preface to Childe Harold IV: My Dear Hobhouse, After an interval of eight years between the composition of the first and last Cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better, to One, who has beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than – though not ungrateful – I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favour reflected through the poem on the poet – to One, whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom I have found wakeful o’er my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my prosperity and firm in my adversity, true in counsel and trusty in peril; to a friend often tried and never found wanting – to – Yourself.

However, in the following year Hobhouse’s diary records this: Election writing, and correcting Byron’s Don Juan – Mazeppa is making a great noise – now suppose anyone else had written it. It contains certainly some fine passages – but I can 21: Marchand I pp.355-8.

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Being “Byron’s Best Friend” not make out what the devil Byron means by tacking a poor piece of prose to the end of his volume.22

He refers to Augustus Darvell, published with Mazeppa. It contains many echoes of his and Byron’s experiences at Ephesus on March 13th 1810. His brusque and puzzled dismissal may be occasioned by the pain the piece caused him, for it clearly places him in the role of narrator, Byron in the role of Darvell, and describes the beginning of their friendship thus: My advances [towards Darvell] were received with sufficient coldness; but I was young, and not easily discouraged, and at length succeeded in obtaining, to a certain degree, that common-place intercourse and moderate confidence of common and every day concerns, created and cemented by similarity of pursuit and frequency of meeting, which is called intimacy, or friendship, according to the ideas of him who uses those words to express them.

Such half-hearted reserve was strange and painful. But worse was to come. At the end of 1819 Hobhouse was imprisoned in Newgate by the Commons – without trial, or even a hearing – for his pamphlet A Trifling Mistake. He was released on the death of George III, became a national hero, and with his radical friend Sir Francis Burdett was elected as M.P. for Westminster and pulled in triumph from Sloane Square to the Crown and Anchor in the Strand. Byron, who was congenitally unable, or unwilling, to distinguish radicals from radical Whigs, or either of them from Cato Street-type revolutionaries, affected, as least, to find it all amusing, and wrote a ballad on the subject: New Song To the tune of “Where hae ye been a’ day, My boy Tammy, O? Courting o’ a young thing, Just come frae her Mammie, O?”23

22: Hobhouse diary, Thursday July 1st 1819. 23: This traditional air was published with an accompaniment by Haydn, published 1792. The lyric expresses the singer’s happiness at wooing a young girl away from her love for her mother – whom he promises to shelter as well (N.B. this is a romantic reading of the lyric).

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1. How came you in Hob’s pound24 to cool, My boy Hobbie, O? Because I bade the people pull The House into the Lobby, O.25 2. What did the House upon this call, My boy Hobbie, O? They voted me to Newgate all; Which is an awkward Jobby, O.26 3. Who are now the people’s men, My boy Hobby, O? There’s I and Burdett – Gentlemen, And blackguard Hunt and Cobby, O.27 4. You hate the House – why canvass, then? My boy Hobbie, O? Because I would reform the den As member for the Mobby, O. 5. Wherefore do you hate the Whigs, My boy Hobbie, O? Because they want to run their rigs As under Walpole Bobby, O.28 6. But when we at Cambridge were, My boy Hobbie, O, If my memory don’t err, You founded a Whig Clubbie, O. 7. When to the mob you make a speech, My boy Hobbie, O, How do you keep without their reach The watch within your fobby, O? –29 24: Newgate. 25: This is just what H.’s enemies asserted, falsely, that he had done in A Trifling Mistake. 26: I have derived the comma from the Scots ballad Edward: “Why does yer hand sae drap wi’ bluid, / And why sae sad gang ye, O?” 27: Henry “Orator” Hunt and William Cobbett. But H. refuses to associate with either of them. 28: The corrupt administration of Sir Robert Walpole (1721-42). 29: While electioneering with Burdett on Thursday December 9th 1819, H. really had had his watch stolen.

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Being “Byron’s Best Friend” 8. But never mind such petty things, My boy Hobbie, O – God save the people – damn all Kings – So let us crown the Mobby, O! Yrs truly, (Signed) Infidus Scurra. March 23rd 1820.

Hobhouse’s diary records how he heard about this: Thursday April 13th 1820: Journal from Monday, March 27th. Remained in town, forget where I dined – believe at the Royal Society Club, where I was surprised to find a Sir Alexander Johnstone30 congratulating me on my success – he has been employed in Ceylon. I there first heard of a ballad, which, it seems, Lord Byron has sent over to me on my imprisonment – the news surprised me – but I did not think much of it at the time. Went to the Royal Society, and to the Antiquarian Society. Sunday April 16th 1820: Came a letter from Murray, including a copy of Lord Byron’s ballad – very bad and base and wanton indeed – but signed “Infidus Scurra,”31 the name we used to give to Scrope Davies ... I am exceedingly unwilling to record this proof of the base nature of my friend – he thought me in prison; he knew me attacked by all parties and pens, he resolved to give his kick too – and in so doing he alluded to my once having belonged to a Whig Club at Cambridge. This to curry favour with the wretched Whigs, and help me downhill. Now I believe this to be wantonness as much as anything – and to have mistaken the nature of my imprisonment, and of the line of popular politics which I have thought it my duty to adopt – yet for a man to give way to such a mere pruriency and itch of writing, against one who has stood by him in all his battles and never refused a single friendly office is a melancholy proof of want of feeling, and, I fear, of principle. It has at any rate rent asunder the veil32 through which I have long looked at this singular man, and I know not that it is in the power of any circumstances hereafter

30: Johnstone unidentified. 31: The phrase signifies “treacherous but stylish parasite and buffoon”. 32: “viel” (Ms.)

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to make me think of him again as I thought of him before – sic extorta voluptas.33 As for the conduct of Murray the bookseller, nothing can be more impertinent and ungrateful. But I shall not complain to myself of this poor creature, but remember Foscolo’s advice, to have as little as possible to do with these demi gentilhommes.34 This man receives the ballad with this direction – “Give the enclosed song to Hobhouse. I know he will never forgive me – but I cannot help it – I have no patience with him and his ragamuffins for getting him into Quod – as he is now in the Flash Capital he will know what I mean.”35 Well, what does Murray? he shows the song about to everybody – a mutilated copy of it gets into the Morning Post, with the heading – “written by a noble poet of the first poetical eminence on his quondam friend and annotator” – and then sends me not the original, but a copy made out by a Clerk!! ——— I wrote a letter to Murray, telling him what I think of the ballad if ordered to be circulated or published, and asking whether Lord Byron ordered him to circulate or publish it. This affair made me very uncomfortable indeed – to be undeceived respecting a man in whom I had “garnered up my heart”!!36

It was the beginning of the end of the relationship. Hobhouse visited Byron in Pisa in 1822, where the two remained genial enough. But he felt as another great injury the fact that Byron had given his Memoirs, not to him, but to Tom Moore (a friend not afflicted with the late-adolescent passion from which Hobhouse suffered). The suspicion – probably an accurate one – that Moore was closer to Byron than he was, was one factor motivating Hobhouse’s determination to have the Memoirs destroyed (though he turned down a request to help in the actual incineration).

33: Horace, Epistles II ii 139: “... cui sic extorta voluptas / et demptus per vim mentis gratissimus error”: “... thus you have robbed me of a valued pleasure and the dearest illusion of my heart”. The words are imagined as said by a man who has been cured of the delusion that he has been delighting in a troupe of tragic actors, when in fact the theatre has been empty. 34: The phrase describes Murray in a letter of Foscolo to Hobhouse of 14 Oct 1818 (E.R.Vincent, Byron, Hobhouse and Foscolo p.41) and in a letter of Hobhouse to Foscolo of 17 Oct 1818 (Ibid., p.43). 35: BLJ VII 59, slightly mangled. 36: Othello, IV ii 58; Othello’s words describing the importance to him of Desdemona’s love, which he thinks he has lost.

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————— The tale is full of “Surely …?”s. “Surely those who destroyed Byron’s memoirs would have read them first?” “Surely Byron would have been supportive of his best friend in his candidature for parliament?” They hadn’t read them (Moore apart), and Byron wasn’t supportive in the way his friends wanted. Scrope Davies writes to him in November 1818, pleading for his return to England: * Sir Mu has lost one Election and two Ships My dear Byron Behold! I show you a mystery!37 Hobhouse is nominated by the Independent Electors of Westminster as a man well qualified to fill in the vacancy occasioned by Romilly’s death – the court party support Sir Murray Maxwell * – the Election will not take place before the beginning of January, a period so distant as to enable you to be an eye and ear witness of the proceedings – and I add that your presence and exertions might and certainly would contribute to H’s success. H. will appear each day on the Hustings and deliver fifteen lectures on Reform – Hear him – in mercy hear him – Leave your heavy baggage and all the other baggages at Venice, and you may reach England within fourteen days after the receipt of this letter – I will provide comfortable lodgings for you, and a front place in one of the booths close to the Hustings, that not a word of our friend’s eloquence may escape you – He already has a fair chance of success – your presence would ensure victory. H. is in a great fuss and fidgets and spits about like a catherine wheel – In vain will you ever again look for such an opportunity to show your regard for one who is devoted to you and yours – above all you will be amused. I have much to say to you which I dare not commit to paper – so let it rest till I see you which I hope to do in the course of six weeks – I have implored your attendance here without debating the propriety of my prayers – so great is my desire to see you, and so much is it to the interest of H. that you should be seen. Lord Holland is now sitting at the table where I am writing this letter and desires me to make his apology for not having written to you lately – the hope of being able to tell you something better than what he at present knows makes him 37: 1 Corinthians 15:51-53; though Davies probably knows it from Messiah.

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defer writing from day to day to the last syllable &c &c you will not be able to give your proxy, unless you yourself shall appear and take the oaths after the meeting of the new Parliament – Is not this a strong reason for your visiting England tho’ but for a fortnight – , in Gods name do your duty to your friend your principles and yourself – and come to England. Lord H. says the best and indeed only good argument for annual returns to parliament is that they would move your annual return to England – 11 Great Ryder St St James’s London

Mrs Leigh sends her love to you – believe me my dear Byron ever yours sincerely Scrope Davies38 Our Queen is dead39

Davies is, “Surely”, convincing in his expressed desire to see Byron again, and in his argument that England is where Byron ought to be. But in his reply Byron delights in finding as many reasons as he can to stay in Italy: Venice. Decr. 7th. 1818 – My dear Scrope, You forget that as a Peer I cannot directly nor indirectly interfere in an Election (unless {I were} proprietor of a Borough) so as to be of service to our friend Hobhouse.40 – You forget that my arrival would probably have the very reverse effect by reviving every species of Calumny against me for the Electioneering purpose of injuring him by the reflection, and that so far from his connection with me being of use to him on such an occasion – it may possibly even now be a principal cause of his failing in the attainment of his object. — I wish him every success, but the more I limit myself to wishes only – the better I shall serve him or any one else in that Country. – – – – – You can hardly have forgotten the circumstances under which I quitted England, nor the rumours of which I was the Subject – if {they were} true I was unfit for England, if false England is unfit for me. – – 38: Scrope Davies to B., December 7th 1818 (text from NLS Acc.12604 / 4178A). 39: Queen Charlotte died on November 17th 1818. 40: This is not true. Nothing prevented a lord from supporting a commoner on the hustings (my thanks to Professor Boyd Hilton for the clarification).

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Byron was to make use of this idea later. Compare I was accused of every monstrous vice by public rumour and private rancour; my name, which had been a knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted. I felt that, if what was whispered and muttered and murmured was true – I was unfit for England; if false – England was unfit for me. I withdrew – but this was not enough. In other countries – in Switzerland – in the shadow of the Alps – and by the blue depth of the Lakes – I was pursued and breathed upon by the same blight. I crossed the mountains, but it was the same – so I went little farther and settled myself by the waves of the Adriatic, like the stag at bay who betakes him to the waters. If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who gathered round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases where political motives have sharpened slander and doubled enmity. I was advised not to go to the theatres lest I should be hissed, nor to my duty in parliament lest I should be insulted by the way – even on the day of my departure my most intimate friend told me afterwards that he was under apprehensions of violence from the people who might be assembled at the door of the carriage. 41

It sounds from the letter that Hobhouse had been first among the “few friends who gathered round”. But his diary conveys no hint about fears of violence towards Byron; and in a marginal note to Moore’s Life, he records there was not the slightest necessity even in appearance for his going abroad.42

Indeed, in addition, in his diary for Monday April 22nd 1816 (the day before Byron leaves Piccadilly Terrace) he records … He [Benjamin Constant] told us that in Paris a man who loses his character in one street has only to change his lodgings to another. That he knows a man who, having behaved

41: Some Observations upon an Article in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, August 1819. 42: I am grateful to Jack Gumpert Wasserman for allowing me to inspect Doris Langley Moore’s transcriptions of H.’s pencilled marginalia to Moore’s Life.

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dreadfully to a woman, left Paris, but in twenty miles, changed his intention and came back, but intended to hide himself. However, he was greeted by his friends as usual, and “Surely,” said he, “if they do not care about this, why should I?”43

… an anecdote which has obvious relevance to Byron’s crisis. But Byron needed to feel ostracised – it had in a few weeks become a vital component of his self-image that, like Ishmael, “every man’s hand was against him”. His letter to Davies continues: You recollect that with the exception of a few friends (yourself among the foremost {of those who staid by me}) I was deserted & blackened by all – that {even} my relations (except my Sister) with that wretched Coxcomb Wilmot and the able=bodied Seaman George, at their head, despaired of or abandoned me – that even Hobhouse thought the tide so strong against me – that he imagined I should be “assassinated”; – I am not & never was apprehensive on that point – but I am not at all sure that I should not be tempted to assassinate some of the wretched woman’s instruments, at least in an honourable way – (Hobhouse’s {parliamentary} predecessor,44 one of them, having already proved the existence of Nemesis by cutting his own throat) and this might not much forward his Election. — – That sooner or later I must return to England – if I live – seems inevitable – as I have children – – connections – property – and interests political as well as personal to require my presence – but I shall not do so willingly – & nothing short of an imperious duty will recall me, – it is true the service of a friend is the most imperious of duties, but my return would not serve our friend Hobhouse in this instance – and this conviction is so strong that I should look upon my presence as an actual injury. — With regard to my more personal & private feelings – you are well aware that there is nothing here nor elsewhere that can make me amends for the absence of the friends I had in England – that my Sister – and my daughter; – that yourself and Hobhouse and Kinnaird and others have always claims & recollections that can attach to 43: Berg Volume 4 (1 Jan 1816-5 Apr 1816); Broughton Holograph Diaries, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. 44: Sir Samuel Romilly.

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Being “Byron’s Best Friend” no subsequent connections of any description – that I shall always look upon you with the greatest regard, & hear of your welfare with the proudest pleasure. – But having said this much, – & feeling far more than I have said; my opinion upon other points is irrevocable – nothing can ever atone to me for the atrocious caprice – the unsupported – almost unasserted – the kind of hinted persecution – and shrugging Conspiracy – of which I was attempted to be made the victim, – if the tables were to be turned – if they were to decree me all the columns of the Morning Post – and {all} the tavern=Signs of Wellington, I would not accept them – or if I could tread upon the necks of those who have attempted to bow down mine – I would not do it – not because I do not abhor them – but there is a something inadequate in any species of revenge that I can figure to my imagination – for the treatment they tried to award me. – – – – – – – We will talk of something else. – – Pray report to me the progress of H’s contest – he is in the right to stand – as even if unsuccessful – it is something to have stood for Westminster – but I trust that he will be brought in. – I have heard from all hands that he speaks uncommonly Well, Lord Lauderdale told me so in particular very recently. – He is gone to England – & has a whole Cargo of my Poesy {addressed to Hobhouse’s care for Murray}45 Hanson has been here too – he bears a letter (about himself) addressed from me to Kinnaird & Hobhouse {jointly} to which I hope they will attend – that is when they have leisure – you will see why, by the Contents – if the Attorneo delivers them safely. – – – Will you remember me to every body – & assure H. of my best wishes, and all our friends of my regards – believing me ever and most affectionately yours B P.S. When I sent Hobhouse the parcel by Lord Lauderdale – I knew nothing of the Suicide and Nomination – of course he cannot nor would I wish him to attend to such trifles {now}, Murray will get one of his literati perhaps – or if not the M.S.S. will take their chance. – – – – – Pray beg Kinnaird to be sure to get my letter to him, from Hanson. –

45: Lauderdale is bringing Mazeppa and Don Juan I.

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We have all here been much pleased with Hobhouse’s book on Italy46 – some part of it the best he ever wrote – and as good as anything can be. – — –47

Thus Byron has it both ways: expressing maximum support for Hobhouse, and maximum warmth towards his London friends: but giving himself every reason to stay put. Were one uncharitable, one could point to My Boy Hobby-O as evidence that Byron, in reality, neither understood nor sympathised with Hobhouse’s politics. Were one being truly mean, one could intuit envy on his part that his short, slavish friend was making a political impact in England, which he, the politically ambitious Byron, would never make. ————— While Byron was alive, Hobhouse’s love-life was furtive, a large additional inhibitory factor being his adoring family, consisting as it did of one sister and (at least) fourteen half-sisters. His need for more than casual female company seems thus to have been in abeyance throughout Byron’s life, although in 1821 he did express a fondness for Sir Francis Burdett’s daughter Susannah. In 1827 he fell in love with another of Burdett’s daughters, Sophia, and proposed, but was refused. After a most unHobhousean affair with the wife of a Wiltshire friend, he married, on July 28th 1828, Lady Julia Tomlinson Hay, sister of the eighth Marquess of Tweeddale, and niece both to Lord Lauderdale (who had brought the first manuscripts of Don Juan to London) and to “King Tom” Maitland, the drunken and unpopular governor of the Ionians. Not a robust person, she collapsed after the ceremony, but bore him three daughters, Julia, born in 1829, Charlotte in 1831, and Sophia in 1832, before dying of tuberculosis on April 3rd 1835. His daughters survived a smallpox attack in 1840, but Julia died of cholera on September 5th 1849. It was Charlotte who, as Lady Dorchester, edited his diaries as Recollections of a Long Life (1909-11). Not only does she omit (naturally), everything squalid, but even removes any references to, for example, Hobhouse’s connection to the radical Francis Place, who had managed his Westminster campaigns. She withheld Byron’s letters to her father, to Lady Melbourne, and to Douglas Kinnaird, so that they don’t appear in R.E.Prothero’s edition 46: Historical Illustrations to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1818). Notice how B. dissociates it from CHP. 47: B. to Scrope Davies, December 7th 1818 (text from B.L.Loan 70 / 1 ff.29-30; BLJ XI 168-70).

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(1898-1904); but bequeathed them, on her death in 1915, to John Murray, who brought them out as a sequel to Prothero in 1922. ————— At Westminster, Hobhouse was a patient committee-man, and his great political achievement was the Select Vestries Bill of 1830, which made local government properly elected and thus accountable (it’s hard to believe) for the first time in English history. This was a necessary prelude to the 1832 Reform Bill. His least admirable achievement came in 1838 / 9, when, as Secretary of the Board of Control for India, he authorised the first, but not the last, western invasion of Afghanistan. ————— In the 1850s, having been kicked upstairs into the Lords (as Baron Broughton de Gyfford), Hobhouse produced two more books for John Murray (by now, for John Murray III): Travels in Albania and other Provinces of Turkey in 1809 and 1810 (1855); and Italy: Remarks made in several visits from the year 1816 to 1854 (1859). If Murray hoped for a less discreet account of Hobhouse’s adventures with Byron, he must have been disappointed, for Hobhouse tells nothing new. He may, however, have done one monstrously indicreet thing already, unbeknown to all, which was, to have written and published anonymously the infamous poems Don Leon and Leon to Annabella, the first purporting to be an autobiographical account of Byron’s affairs with men. See the appendix to Byron and Women [and Men] (CSP, 2010), for an edition, and evidence of Hobhouse’s hand in them. They were for many years unpublishable.

BEING BYRON’S BANKER

Of all Byron’s friends, Douglas Kinnaird is the most neglected. Hobhouse, Moore and Davies all have books written about them – Kinnaird, not. He was born on February 26th 1788, the fourth son of George, the seventh Lord Kinnaird, of Inchture, Perthshire. He was educated from 1799 to 1802 at Eton, then at Gottingen University, where he became fluent in French and German. He graduated MA from Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1811. In July 1813 he went to Germany again, where he visited Alexander I’s headquarters at Peterswaldau. In Berlin, J.C.Hobhouse fell in love, and was unwise enough to confess his infatuation to Kinnaird, who “did a Byron” and told everyone else. Kinnaird witnessed the Russo-Prussian victory over the French at Kulm, on August 30th. Travelling via Prague to Paris, he was present at Louis XVIII’s first entry, on April 28th 1814, before returning to England with the journalist William Jerdan. Although Kinnaird had been acquainted with Byron at Cambridge, their friendship began in earnest in the winter of 1814 when Moore recalls “those evenings we passed together at the house of ... Douglas Kinnaird, where music, – followed by its accustomed sequel of supper, brandy and water, and not a little laughter, – kept us together, usually till rather a late 1 hour”. These parties were presided over by Kinnaird’s mistress, the actress and singer Maria Keppel, mother to an illegitimate son born in April 1814. Their relationship, which lasted from 1809 to 1818, was extremely volatile, with frequent separations. Neither she, nor the son, was remembered in his will: on July 31st 1820 Hobhouse, loyal in this as in all things, had planted in his mind the suspicion that the son was someone else’s, and Kinnaird confirms this to be the case in a top-of-the-page “P.S.” to Byron of January 11th 1821. In May 1815 Kinnaird was elected to the management subcommittee of Drury Lane, boasting to Hobhouse of having persuaded Byron to join him:

Unpublished. 1: Moore’s Life, III 136-7.

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Being Byron’s Banker Pall Mall May 11th 1815 My dear Hobhouse, I write this to anticipate your gratulatory epistle on my elevation into the Committee of management of a real playhouse – your cautious disposition will dispose you to cry out against the folly of exposing myself to be shot at by every illnatur’d jocular fellow that visits London for the Holydays – what will you say to me for drawing our friend Byron into the same situation? Scarcely out of his Hebrew scrape e’re I get him well into this – Well Sir, the Lord is delighted with his office, & will, I think, fill it nobly – I am not sure that he feels the full weight of his responsibility as much as I do – But there was no alternative between letting the Theatre & coming forward boldly to serve & I hope preserve it – if you do not forthwith write a play for us, we fully expect you will send us over any French light after-pieces, & operas (new ones) which wd do well to translate – if you stay in Paris, you might employ a leisure hour of your evening in visiting the Theatres with such a view I do not write one word on Politics, as you probably see our newspapers – We are going passively into a war which must end unsatisfactorily, when we compare the dreadful expense of any object we may attain – For my own part I profess myself unable to conjecture the real cause of the war – Lady Byron in the family way – Your’s very faithfully Douglas Kinnaird You have treated Leake as he deserves –2

During the Separation trouble, acting on a commission, he wrote a letter dated March 26th 1816, denying that Byron had ever spoken ill of his wife (as if that were the point at issue). The sharing of Kinnaird’s bachelor lifestyle and his close involvement with the stage hastened the collapse of Byron’s marriage: early in 1816 John Murray told Augusta that “he also maintained D.K. as a very improper associate”. Kinnaird introduced the poet to both Edmund Kean and Isaac Nathan, for the latter of whom Byron wrote Hebrew Melodies, “at the request of my friend, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird” (Advertisement to Hebrew Melodies, January

2: Kinnaird to Hobhouse, May 11th 1815 (text from B.L.Add.Mss. 47224 ff.3-4).

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1815). Kinnaird, who was an accomplished amateur singer, rapidly became disillusioned with the project. He also seems to have been very handsome, unlike Hobhouse, with whom he was pally.3 On April 7th 1820 Hobhouse records, Called on a Piece with Kinnaird. She poor girl said she should not care if she died tomorrow – I asked her why? – She said “I am tired!!!” This is the best reason I think, and I am sure this poor creature was sincere in what she said.4

In London on April 22nd 1816 Kinnaird and Maria Keppel gave Byron two bottles of champagne and a cake as parting gifts before, three days later, he left England for ever. Byron had awarded him power of attorney, so that thereafter, as well as handling all of his English finances, Kinnaird was one of the chief recipients of his correspondence from Italy. Effectively running that playhouse after the post-Waterloo suicide of Sir Samuel Whitbread, he commissioned Byron’s Monody on Sheridan, written at Diodati in July 1816, and spoken by Mrs Davison at Drury Lane on September 7th. Kinnaird was, however, very unpopular backstage at Drury Lane on account of his abrasive style – Byron often refers to him as “the hot and fiery Douglas” – and had to resign (he signals as much to Byron on September 13th 1816 with the ominous phrase “The Thanes fly from me”). Monk Lewis wrote to Byron: “they say, that the rapture of Drury Lane from Kean to the Scene-Shifters inclusive, when D. Kinnaird’s expulsion was announced, was something quite ludicrous”.5 In 1817, with his brother Charles (Lord Kinnaird), Kinnaird travelled to Venice, where the brothers saw Byron from September 19th to October 1st. They brought with them a copy of Hookham Frere’s recentlypublished Whistlecraft. Seeing ottava rima applied to comic English poetry inspired Byron to write Beppo in two nights, and then Don Juan itself. The Kinnaird brothers may thus be said to have been – without realising it – the most important poetic influence of Byron’s whole career. Here is Kinnaird’s initial reaction to Don Juan:

3: Wikipedia tells us that Kinnaird was a keen cricketer. There are no references to the sport in the Byron / Kinnaird correspondence. 4: B.L.Add.Mss.56541, f.25v.; diary entry for April 7th 1820. 5: Matthew Gregory Lewis to B., November 3rd 1817 (text from NLS Acc.12604 / 4247G).

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Being Byron’s Banker I have read your Poems – Don Juan is exquisite – It must be cut for the Syphilis6 – When we have pounded Murray I will not fail to write by the same Post – Your definition of May7 is a great truth … I think your Poem is justly bitter & exquisitely humorous – You will have the world on your side – The revolution is coming – Rely on it Believe me, My dear Byron, in nothing more earnest or happy than when employed in serving you – Yours most sincerely Douglas Kinnaird8

Marino Faliero is dedicated to Kinnaird, who saw it three times during its Drury Lane run and assured Byron that it worked very well on stage – which Byron did not want to know. Here are Kinnaird’s letters about the first two performances he saw: London May 1 – 1821 vy cold & frosty – My dear Byron I went last night to see the Doge on the Stage – Mr Cooper &c did not, as you imagine, realise your conception – I fairly confess, I believe myself to have formed a wrong opinion of its’ fitness for the stage – It was very affective – The audience felt it so – I could not have believed an English audience so sensible to the beauties of this admirable production – I shall go again tomorrow – with regard to the law, I am convinc’d it is against you & your publisher – were it otherwise, no man could with impunity read any of your poetry or prose or that of any one else, aloud in a room for money – Common law is here out of the question – Authors were not known before the art of printing – I mean as having property, transferable & saleable – The statute recognizes their property in their works – But then the words of the Statute must be referred to – & these speak alone of printing &c – not of reciting – If I have learnt a printed book by heart – which book I have bought, the devil is in it if I may not repeat what I remember – Kean will one day make a hit in the Doge – the little rogue is making thousands in America – He is still more admired there than here – His instance is another proof of the injustice with which the public is always loaded – The Americans were said to be incapable of feeling pleasure from theatrical representating – But the appearance of a man 6: D.J. I 129, 7. 7: D.J. I st.102. 8: Kinnaird to B., December 29th 1818 (text from NLS Ms.43455).

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of Genius proves the absurdity of the imputation – They give him public dinners – The drag him into & out of their Cities – I have desired circulars to be sent to you for Murray’s Bill. –

They shall come by the next post – I do not admire the Signora much9 – The Signor Curione makes his debut this evening – Hobhouse has served it out to Mr Canning in admirable form – He has shown talent Courage & judgement – It has raised [Ms. tear: “him”] The funds all safe – no bad news of Lady N. Yours faithfully Douglas Kinnaird10 May 4 – 1821 My dear Byron, I went to see your Tragedy again last night – It is admirable – I retract {my former opinion} – , – It acts to perfection – The public have always more merit than they have credit for – a scatter’d audience – thin – & meagre – Their attention so arrested throughout the whole time, that a noseblowing was considered an indecent interruption – Kean would have been, & will be still greater than he yet has shown himself when he personates the Doge – the Doge is not on the whole ill-acted – nor are the other parts – The Angiolina of Mrs West is certainly damnable – But all the Conspiracy Scenes are so well written that the actors are not put to it to help them out – I would not have believ’d an English audience of the present day had the discernment I witnessd in them last night – The applause was only at times – but one hand drew down the whole at once – The most intense silence & attention was the striking tribute to the author’s merits – The interest rose without interruption till the last – The Curtain falls as the Doge kneels to lay his head on the Block – The play had no aid from scenery, or Decoration, or dresses – But the public does not come to see it – But they will do one of these days – No one sees it without becoming a proselyte11 – But all seem to have follow’d the {unanimous} Dictum of the Press that it was not fitted for the Stage – whence arises this unanimity? I 9: Refers to the singer Arpalice Taruscelli, one of B.’s Venetian mistresses whom he had recommended that Kinnaird should “try”. 10: Kinnaird to B., May 1st 1821 (text from NLS Ms.43455). 11: B. was unconvinced. He writes to Murray, June 29th 1821: “I am quite ignorant how far ‘the Doge’ did or did not succeed – yr. first letters seemed to say yes – your last say nothing. – My own immediate friends are naturally partial …”

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Being Byron’s Banker believe in stratagems & plots12 – The literary {or writing} world, all of which envies & would kill you, has an interest in preventing you from trying the stage – You have tried it under every possible disadvantage against your consent, & your Genius has beaten your Judgement – There is nothing on the Stage but Shakespeare that can compare with it, for uniform & extraordinary appropriateness of the Sentiments to each particular character & circumstance – The language for tr[Ms. tear: “ue”] simplicity grace & force is unrivall’d – (I would cut out “false dice”13 by the Bye) – It will live as long as language – Will it not be ranked as your best? I think so – It requires to be almost learned by heart to feel it’s merits – The character of the Doge is more fully & perfectly developed than any character except one or two drawn by Shakespeare – But what is most striking after all is the naturalness of all the action on the stage – There is a continuity of the story that is never once broken – & it is never tiresome – It is quite wonderful – However delightful the closet, I say its’ merits are only half understood till it is acted – Excuse this scrawl – Elliston is abused in a canting tone by all the press – {I say on the contrary} he had a right to act it – & you had no right to ask him to desist from his trade – – I hear that Murray had 5000 Copies subscribed for before it was published – If so, he has made a good bargain with you – I acted only in consequence of his telling me he had concluded it with you – was that so? If it was not, the bargain does not hold good, and I would now get, as it [ ], £200014

But Byron has no faith in Kinnaird’s ideas for the stage: I understand what you want – you want me to write a love=play – but this were contrary {to} all my principles – as well as to those of Aristotle – I want to simplify your drama – to render it fit for the higher passions – & to make it more Doric and austere. –15

Kinnaird sums up his attitude to Byron’s reformist ambitions on June 29th 1821: “Damn the Unities – I am strongly persuaded you are destin’d to write some wonderful Tragedies”. If Byron seems unrealistically panic-stricken about the prospect of an English revolution, Kinnaird is in part to blame. Here is a letter he writes, 12: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, V i 84. 13: Marino Faliero IV ii 291. 14: Kinnaird to B., May 4th 1821 (text from NLS Ms.43455). 15: B. to Kinnaird, September 27th 1821.

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apparently from the midst of such an event, on the day of Queen Caroline’s funeral: I am now writing in a city where civil war is raging – The stupid Govt wished to carry the Corpse of the late Heroic & good Queen round instead of thro’ the City, where the Corporation wished to shew some marks of outward respect to it – There was a regular battle at Kensington – where the People beat the Constables – at Hyde Park Corner another fight, where the Life Guards fired – But the Blues would not – Some lives lost I hear – The People threw up retrenchments on the City Road, & turned the Procession down Tottenham Court Road Drury Lane & thro’ Temple Bar – where the RedCoats were all turned back, But the Blues were admitted amidst the Cheers of the People – It is a complete defeat of the military arm of this Stupid Government – Do not be in a hurry about the Funds – I am watching them – They will not fall yet – Before they do we will get a mortgage – But the fact is such things are difficult to find. Your’s faithfully Douglas Kinnaird16

Kinnaird first attempted to enter parliament in the general election of 1818. Although nominated as a candidate for Westminster, he stood down in favour of Sir Francis Burdett. He was however elected MP for for Bishops Castle, Shropshire, at a by-election in July the following year. This enabled him to defend Hobhouse in the debate on the Trifling Mistake pamphlet in December 1819, when the latter was imprisoned without trial for breach of parliamentary privilege. Politically on the radical Whig left (unlike Byron, who couldn’t think straight about radicalism), he was, in the general election of March 1820, re-elected by only four votes in the double return for the same constituency, but declared “not duly elected” in July, after which he stood down from parliament, never to return. On December 16th, from Newgate, Hobhouse wrote “D. Kinnaird ... has made a failure in the H. of Commons & is ashamed – or his partners wish to keep him from public meetings”, alluding to his avoidance of mass reform rallies and increased involvement with the family bank. On the dissolution of the partnership with Sir F. B. Morland that year, Kinnaird became sole managing director of Ransom and Morland’s, Pall Mall. They later became Barclay’s, and a dereliction of duty on someone’s 16: Kinnaird to B., August 14th 1821 text from NLS Ms.43455).

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part led to the sensational discovery in 1976, in the Pall Mall vault, of a large trunk of hitherto unsuspected papers from the Shelleys, Byron, and Scrope Davies. ————— Kinnaird was a very effective “hit-man” for Byron, whose covert instructions and wishes he could both interpret, and bear the poet’s wrath when Byron claimed afterwards he had been misunderstood. John Murray complained of his uncompromising manner: “Hobhouse is also very gentlemanly but I don’t know you when I negotiate with Mr Kinnaird”, writes Murray to Byron, March 6th 1821. “… this Scotchman considers you as his property” Kinnaird tells Byron on January 10th 1815. It was owing to his implementation of Byron’s decisions that The Age of Bronze and The Island were published separately from The Liberal, causing the collapse of that periodical (see elsewhere). He was also responsible, however, for the loss of the prose preface to The Vision of Judgement (the manuscript of which has never been found), which necessitated the poem’s republication, and was one final cause of Byron’s break with John Murray. As manager of Byron’s English finances Kinnaird’s task was insurmountable. Byron had always left the management of his money to others, principally to his villainous lawyer John Hanson – who took full advantage of the poet’s inability to be bothered. Some things Kinnaird could not fix – like Byron’s refusal to pay the rent on Piccadilly Terrace, or to pay Baxter the coachmaker for his replica of Napoleon’s travellingvehicle (“it is very iniquitous,” he writes on October 26th 1819, “to make me pay my debts – you have no idea of the pain it gives one”). Baxter was happy to stay unpaid, because the debt accumulated so much interest: Kinnaird finally reports having paid him, as late as March 19th 1824, a thousand pounds – twice as much as the original price. For other things Kinnaird is responsible, such as Byron’s apprehension that an English revolution is immanent (see letter above) and that his money is not safe in the government funds. It’s a sign of Kinnaird’s professional fortitude, however, that he never takes the money out of the funds despite Byron’s repeated screams that he should do so: though his failure to put it instead into mortgages may be in part because neither Hanson, nor Lady Byron’s trustees, will play the game. The patience Kinnaird shows when dealing with Byron is easy to explain. In answer to one missing and (it seems) fleshly letter from the poet in Ravenna, he writes, on July 5th 1819:

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My dear Byron, Your letter of the 19th ult:o is before me – & Hobhouse is master of its’ Contents – He & Sr Scrope will join in a stoup of my this day’s wine to to the duration of your testers & Do icles – We have proceeded so far in the Completion of the Sale of Newstead that £66.000 is actually invested in the 3 per ct Consolidated Fund in the joint names of Mr Bland & myself – The income arising therefrom is about £2400 per ann: & £200 per ann: from Sr Jacob are your’s – The rest is to be completed in the course of a week Your’s faithfully Douglas Kinnaird

Like Hobhouse, and like Scrope (who used Byron’s poetry for seductions), Kinnaird was the poet’s companion in worldly indulgence, and would always take his side against the Murrays and the Hansons. Nevertheless, Byron’s affectation of financial expertise, which gets louder and louder from 1819 onwards, must have been a sore trial to Kinnaird; but he rarely cracks – “you are a fickle man” (Kinnaird to Byron, December 28th 1819) is a small example; on December 10th 1822 he sighs, “I am really & sincerely glad that you are taking the trouble to look after & understand your own affairs”. In one letter (April 6th 1819) he’s reduced to giving Byron a lecture on the elementary ethics of finance: It is certainly for your honor as well as interest that all the small ones [debts] should be paid first – for your honor, because fewer persons would be able to say you were in debt to them, for your interest, because they, if unpaid, might bring numerous and expensive actions & proceed even to outlawry ...

The prospect of being outlawed from the country he hated probably didn’t worry Byron too much: he’d outlawed himself from it already. But, thanks to Kinnaird, a lot of his debts do get paid. The contexts revealed by seeing the Kinnaird / Byron correspondence entire can be shocking. On October 7th and 8th 1819, Kinnaird writes a three-and-a-half sheet, 2,500 word letter, reminding Byron of his financial obligations in Nottinghamshire: ... then came the question who was to be paid & who was to be ask’d to wait – He [Hanson] propos’d to leave the Country Creditors to shift for themselves – To that I objected in the name of & on behalf of your character – Having sold your estate, it would not have been proper to have left your debts around it unpaid ...”

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He also adds a note at the end: “P.S. Do let me subscribe your mite to the Manchester Sufferers”. Byron responds on October 26th 1819 with one of his most famous letters, the one including, “As to “Don Juan” – confess – confess – you dog – and be candid – that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing – it may be bawdy – but is it not good English? – It may be profligate but is it not life, is it not the thing? – Could any man have written it – who has not lived in the world? – and tooled in a post=chaise? – in – a hackney coach? – in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? – in a vis a vis? – on a table? – and under it?” He dismisses Kinnaird’s scruples about his Nottinghamshire debts with “Damn your delicacy. – It is a low commercial quality – and very unworthy a man who prefixes ‘honourable’ to his nomenclature”: and ends by saying that he can’t be bothered to donate anything to the Manchester sufferers. ————— Those who like to think of Byron as a “Romantic” poet, the white heat of whose creativity cuts him off from his species, will be shocked to find how readily he commodifies his own and other people’s poetry: The question of poesy of mine yet unaccounted for in Murray’s hands – amounts to (including the three new Cantos of D. J.) at an under computation to ten thousand lines of verse. – There are the three Juans – (three thousand lines) the three plays – at an average at least two thousand lines each – the translation from Pulci seven hundred – the Hints from Horace as many – with the Po and one or two smaller pieces. – It will be nearer twelve than ten thousand fairly reckoned. – (Marino Faliero {contained} three thousand five hundred lines or four hundred & fifty I forget which). Now you know how much Scott & Moore received for poems not exceeding in length six thousand or seven thousand lines. –17

Byron’s unpredictability – his two-facedness, his wonderful quicksilver inconsistency – his “mobility”, as Byronists like to call it – is well-shown in this correspondence. On the one hand he assures Kinnaird over and over again that he will be governed by his agent’s expertise: on the other he makes peremptory demands which contradict that expertise. On the one hand he says he will leave to Kinnaird all negotiations with John Murray: on the other he writes bullying letters to Murray himself – sending them, sometimes, via Kinnaird. 17: B. to Kinnaird, September 15th 1821 (text from NLS Ms.43452; BLJ VIII 21112).

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The repetitive nature of Byron’s letters to Kinnaird is a consequence, firstly of his impatience, secondly of his fear that his previous letters haven’t got through. It’s a tribute to the continental postal system of the early 1820s, however, that nearly all of them do get through – few seem lost (though at least one has been destroyed: the one in which Byron describes Hobhouse’s hysterical reaction to Cain). As 1822 draws to a close, it becomes clear to Byron that, no matter how he economises domestically (cutting down on servants and horses, putting his schooner in the arsenal), his finances will always be in a mess. His Jekyll-and-Hyde attempt at living in one country while holding all his property in another, which he says he hates, and to which he refuses to return, is too much even for one as adaptable as he. Kinnaird’s professionalism is wasted on him – the two men live in different financial universes. Byron’s dreams of emigrating to South America – to the U.S.A. – to van Diemen’s Land – only show his desperation. His amateur attempts at budgetting, done on small scraps of paper, only prove the point. Issues with which Kinnaird has to deal are as follows: 1) Trying to clear up Byron’s existing English debts, still unpaid even after the sale of Newstead – these include the one to Baxter, for his Napoleonic coach. 2) How best to invest the money which has come to Byron from the sale of Newstead. It’s in government funds, which Byron (in cliché a revolutionary firebrand) is terrified are under threat from an English revolution – of which he imagines his close friends Kinnaird and 18 Hobhouse to be about to spearhead! His preferred alternative – none too realistic in these imagined circumstances – is to lend it out in the form of a mortgage. His preferred mortgagee is Lord Blessington: but the shady and subtle John Hanson would like it to be a member of his own family. Both Byron and Kinnaird naturally object. It is not clear to me how this business is settled, if at all. On May 3rd 1822 Kinnaird 18: See B. to Augusta Leigh, January 2nd 1820: “But if in this coming crash – my fortunes are to be swept down with the rest. – Why then the only barrier which holds me aloof from taking a part in these miserable contests being broken down – I will fight my way too – with what success I know not – but with what moderation I know but too well. – If you but knew how I despise and abhor all these men – and all these things – you would easily suppose how reluctantly I contemplate being called upon to act with or against any of the parties. – All I desire is to preserve the remains of the fortunes of our house – and then they may do as they please.” (text from NLS Ms.43479; BLJ VII 14-15).

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writes, “I have engaged for £46000 on mortgage at 4½ per cent – not 4 – I hope you are well satisfied with this”: but whether the mortgage is actually purchased is uncertain. It would still leave a lot of the poet’s money still in the Funds. 3) Trying to settle the forever-unfinished business over the ownership of the Rochdale collieries, which has rumbled on ever since Byron’s childhood, and which continues into 1823, even when James Deardon, his opponent in the litigation, wants to settle amicably as much as Byron does. Byron – never happy in the role of feudal landowner, despite such wonderful lines as “If there be any Church patronage – stickle for it obstinately; I should like to prefer a Clergyman” – is asked to answer petitions over the setting-up of a new Rochdale market-place, an issue about which he feels strangely indifferent. On March 19th 1824 Kinnaird writes, “Mr Deardon has behaved throughout in the fairest manner – Had you met 12 years ago you wd have settled the matter at once & have saved thousands in law”. 4) Trying to settle the affairs of the Noel estate. Lady Noel’s death may give Byron a new signature, but brings much boring business, more minute and complicated than he anticipated – assisted by the lawyers’ natural anxiety to protract the business as long as they can. Here again his enthusiasm for his supposed new role as Lord of the Manor is tested over whether or not one Davidson can be appointed Steward of the Noel estate. In these unreal circumstances the call of the London Greek Committee is a liberating message from the beyond: at last he can order Kinnaird to realise as much capital as there is, and go to spend it on “The Cause”. Douglas Kinnaird, his real-life sheet anchor, the man he knows he needs, the man who tries to keep him in the real world, can at last be dispensed with. After Douglas Kinnaird, there is only Missolonghi. It was Kinnaird who, on May 14th 1824, was the first in England to learn of Byron’s death, immediately writing from his own sickbed to Hobhouse: “delay is absurd & I know not how to soften what your own 19 fortitude alone can make you bear like a man – Byron is no more”. To Hobhouse’s relief, Kinnaird then volunteered to break the news of her brother’s death to Augusta Leigh. Soon afterwards he was involved with Byron’s funeral arrangements, including applying to Dr Ireland, Dean of Westminster, to request interment in the Abbey. This annoyed Hobhouse 19: B.L.Add.Mss.47224 f.26.

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because it had “given [Ireland] an opportunity to refuse burial” there. On May 16th 1824 Kinnaird was “obliged to depart immediately for 21 Scotland”, and so was not present at the destruction, the following day, of Byron’s Memoirs. This was diplomatic: we may assume he was against the burning, for he had expressed admiration for the work. 22 Despite describing her as “I think half=witted”, Kinnaird was anxious to help Augusta when he realized her to be financially “in great difficulty” in 1829. Before he could do so, however, he succumbed to the cancer which he had suffered for several years. He died at his Pall Mall home, aged forty-two, on Friday March 12th 1830, less than a fortnight after writing his will, and was buried at St Martin-in-the-Fields on March 19th. Hobhouse was being modest when he told Rogers, “I am sure 23 Kinnaird is the best friend Byron ever had in the world”, but he certainly came a close second to Hobhouse (though Moore takes precedence over both). In his diary, Hobhouse describes Kinnaird’s end thus: Friday March 12th 1830: at Selected Vestries Committee – returning I went into Ransom’s and found my poor friend Douglas Kinnaird had just died – most tranquilly – poor fellow – I shall state the truth about him in a manner which I hope will be satisfactory to his friends – Vernon – Matthews – Byron – Kinnaird. all are gone – there seems a fatality attending my friendship. Kinnaird made his will nine days ago – excepting small legacies he left everything to Lord Kinnaird – he was perfectly resigned & composed and discussed matters of business with his partner Mr Squire with perfect self-possession – His medical men – Chambers & Halford – & (once) Warren – were the last to see his danger – Friday March 19th 1830: Attended the funeral of my poor friend Douglas Kinnaird & saw him laid in a new made vault in St Martins Church – He was I saw by the plate on his coffin 42 years old – Lord Kinnaird – his two brothers – Capt Hope – Sir James Wedderburn were chief mourners & pall bearers – The two Williams – & Squire Baillie – Lumley – Byng – Bruce – Chambers – Burdett & myself the only friends who 20: Marchand, 468. 21: RLL III 336. 22: B.L.Add.Mss. 47224 f.40. 23: B.L.Add.Mss. 56548.

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attended – as the funeral was quite private – I made out the list for Lord K – part of the service was read in the church – part in the vault beneath – some of the mourners seemed much affected – but a grey headed servant of the bank who was looking on at a distance cried bitterly – an undeniable proof of my friend’s kindness – It is a sad ceremony indeed – if it were nothing but a ceremony – Douglas Kinnaird by his will dictated only on the 1st of last march has left every thing, except legacies to the amount of about 14,000£ to young Lord Kinnaird – His physician Chambers has 200£ – he is the only one of his friends mentioned – but Lord K told me that he wished to have a token of remembrance sent to his several friends –

Lord Kinnaird, Douglas’s brother, had not been well himself for some time. On Saturday June 25th 1825, Hobhouse had written in his diary: Saw Lord Kinnaird – in bed, one eye shut, and his mouth distorted. He spoke slowly and carefully. I did not remark any failure of intellect, but how changed from the most lively, gay, agreeable man in Europe. He had, however, now and then something like his own smile on his features, and he said one or two things that reminded me of his former style. He said, “Well, Hobhouse, they have diddled me at last – I am done”. I said, “Pooh, nonsense!” – “What?” said he, “Do you think I can recover?” I told him that I had called before, but that the people below had recommended me not to come up. He was hurt at this, and said, “I would rather see you than anybody”. His son George, a very fine young lad, was in the room attending on his father. Lord Kinnaird was never a healthy man, but I believe he brought this calamity on himself by venereal excitement with the French girl that killed the late Colonel Percy in the same manner. Better that he should die soon than continue thus the wreck of a man. He is going to Scotland to join Lady Kinnaird, who is also very ill. She was the most beautiful woman in England, and Lord Kinnaird was passionately fond of her – but they have not lived as man and wife together for many years, and have not seen each other for a year and a half.24

24: B.L.Add.Mss.56549.

CHILDE HAROLD’S PILGRIMAGE

“Does the cant of sentiment still continue in England?” asked Byron. “‘Childe Harold’ called it forth, but my ‘Juan’ was well calculated to cast it into the shade, and had that merit, if it had no other; but I must not refer to the Don, as that, I remember, is a prohibited subject between us …”1 Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage poses as a true account of Byron’s travels in the Eastern Mediterranean in 1809-10; of his journey from the English Channel, via the Rhine, to Switzerland in 1816; and of his life in Italy in 1817. He would have us believe that it reflects in verse his thoughts and experiences, just as faithfully as do his journals in London, in the Alps, in Ravenna, and on Cefalonia, reflect them in prose. But people ignore the following at their peril (it was written in October 1822): And after all, what is a lie? ’tis but The Truth in Masquerade; and I defy Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests to put A fact without some leaven of a lie; The very Shadow of the Truth would shut Up Annals, Revelations, Poesy, And Prophecy; except it should be dated Some years before the incidents related. Praised be all liars and all lies! – (Don Juan XI sts. 37-8)

The presence (the diminishing presence) of the Pilgrimage’s gloomy protagonist, who seems to function as Byron’s alter ego, doppelgänger, Ghostly Other, surrogate, alternative hero, or what you will, should make us suspicious – why is he necessary, unless to cover something up? —————

Unpublished. 1: Blessington p.213.

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There are two ways in which the poem can be divided. The first way is between Cantos I and II, and Cantos III and IV. Cantos I and II were intended originally as a private poem, and had to be published with potentially embarrassing sections cut or re-written: Byron gave the copyright away. Cantos III and IV were written – or constructed – as marketable public commodities, and Byron demanded and received 4,600 guineas for them. The second way is between Cantos I, II and IV on the one hand, and Canto III on the other. Cantos I, II and IV were written in the company of the misanthropic (and misogynistic) John Cam Hobhouse, and Canto III largely in the idealistic company of Shelley, whom Hobhouse disliked. Poets, according to Byron in the later Don Juan, “take all colours, like the hands of dyers”; and Byron was in his earlier days unduly influenced by strong personalities in his vicinity. The jealous Hobhouse saw the difference at once, and without being explicit about his distaste for Shelley, diarised: (Mem: Byron has given me before another Canto of Childe Harold to read. It is very fine in parts, but I doubt whether I like it so much as his first Cantos – there is an air of mystery and metaphysics about it …)2

Cantos I and II are travelogues / diaries / confessional poems aimed initially at the entertainment of Byron’s brilliant friend C.S.Matthews, a closet gay.3 Byron’s life was – money apart – trouble-free when he wrote them. Cantos III and IV were written after the disastrous failure of his marriage drove him from the land with a heavy load of semiacknowledged guilt and a newly-found appetite for money, which he tried to hide in these, his public pronouncements, by bluster, and the hollow pretence that his enemies had conspired to expel him from their midst: From mighty wrongs to petty perfidy Have I not seen what human things could do? From the loud roar of foaming Calumny To the small whisper of th’as paltry few, And subtler venom of the reptile Crew, The Janus Glance of whose significant eye, Learning to lie with Silence, would seem true, 2: Hobhouse diary, Sunday September 1st 1816 (B.L.Add.Mss. 56536). 3: For an excellent argument here, see Tom Mole, Byron’s Romantic Celebrity Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutic of Intimacy (Palgrave Macmillan 2007), pp.47-57.

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And without utterance, save the Shrug or sigh, Deal round to happy fools its speechless Obloquy.4 (CHP IV st.136.)

The rhetoric carries all before it, so that we aren’t able to pause and rephrase the second line as “Has not your wife seen what you, the ‘thing’ she married, could do?” Along with their travelogue / diary aspects, the two poems function as personal propaganda, together with Fare Thee Well and A Sketch from Private Life. In private verse he was more honest: The fault was mine – nor do I seek to screen My errors with defensive paradox: I have been cunning in mine overthrow, The careful pilot of my proper woe. (Epistle to Augusta, ll.21-4)

“The Janus Glance of whose significant eye, / Learning to lie with Silence” is his way of saying that, faced with his mendacious bluster, his wife refused to play his game, and, in public, maintained a dignified reserve. In the opening of Canto III, he pretends affection for the child whose coming into the world had driven him half-mad (he had asked his wife at intervals during her pregnancy whether it was dead):5 Is thy face like thy Mother’s? my fair child Ada! sole daughter of my House and heart? When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled, – Awaking with a start, The Waters heave around me; and on high The Winds lift up their voices: I depart, Whither I know not – but the hour’s gone by, When Albion’s lessening shores could grieve or glad mine eye. (CHP III st.1)

But he leaves himself a cunning escape-route: it’s all just a dream. Childe Harold I and II were written in the early stanzas in a semi-camp idiom, with pseudo-medieval touches (“whilom”, “ne”, “wight” – like “eftsoons” in The Ancient Mariner, only with less excuse, for he’s not pretending that his poem is an ancient ballad), and was at first intended for 4: B. is here echoing Pope: Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot: “Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, / And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer.” 5: Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife (Macdonald 1962), p.328.

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the private entertainment of Matthews and perhaps Hobhouse: but Matthews died, the pompous R.C.Dallas read the poem, which an initially embarrassed Byron let him see – and as a result, it was redone for more polite consumption, bowdlerised, all the homoerotic touches deleted or rephrased, published by John Murray in 1812, and became an instant sensation. In 1816 Byron left the country again, felt the need (a) for publicity and (b) for money, and “master of the adjusted idiom” that he was,6 wrote two more cantos (or as I prefer to put it, manufactured two more cantos) of the poem which had been so successful in 1812, but for which, whether quixotically or not, he had refused payment. Canto III contains such stuff as this: Could I embody and unbosom now That which is most within me, – could I wreak My thoughts upon Expression – and thus throw Soul – heart – mind – passions – feelings – strong or weak, All that I would have sought, and all I seek, Bear – know – feel – and yet breath – into one word, And that one Word were Lightning, I would speak; But as it is, I live and die unheard, With a most voiceless thought, sheathing it as a sword. (CHP III st.97)

He’s the most successful poet in the language, writing a work which he anticipates correctly will make him more successful still; “I live and die unheard” is a fatuous contradiction of what every reader will know to be the truth. But he writes on, confident of his ability to dazzle. “I would speak” is Byron, confident that no matter how idiotically he writes, his readers’ idiotism cannot be stretched to breaking-point. For evidence of his skill at adjusting his idiom, see these, the last two stanzas written for insertion into Childe Harold IV: Oh! that the desart were my dwelling-place, With one fair Spirit for my Minister, That I might all forget the human race, And, hating no one, love but only her! Ye Elements! – in whose ennobling stir I feel myself exalted – Can ye not Accord me such a Being? Do I err 6: See Bernard Beatty, Byron, Pope, and Feminine Endings, in Cochran (ed.) Byron’s Poetry (CSP 2012), p.134.

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In deeming such inhabit many a spot? Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot. There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep Sea, and Music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more, From these our interviews, in which I steal From all I may be, or have been before, To mingle with the Universe, and feel What I can ne’er express – yet cannot all conceal. (CHP IV sts. 177-8)

When he wrote this vapid nonsense, Byron had already written this: I said that like a picture by Giorgione Venetian women were, and so they are, Particularly seen from a balcony (For Beauty’s sometimes best set off afar) And there just like a heroine of Goldoni They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar; And truth to say they’re mostly very pretty, And rather like to show it, more’s the Pity! For Glances beget Ogles, Ogles Sighs, Sighs Wishes, Wishes Words, and Words a Letter, Which flies on wings of light-heeled Mercuries, Who do such things because they know no better, And then God knows! what Mischief may arise, When Love links two young people in one fetter: Vile Assignations, and adulterous beds, Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads. – (Beppo sts.15-16)

The difference is between a poet putting on a hammy performance, which will only impress gullible female readers, and a poet with his feet on the ground, writing to entertain, tantalise and instruct those already sophisticated. Byron’s treatment of Italy here, depicting it as a non-stop round of intrigue and triviality, triviality and intrigue, as illustrated by its own artists and dramatists, contrasts with his treatment of the country in Childe Harold IV:

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Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage The Commonwealth of Kings – the Men of Rome! And even since, and now, fair Italy! Thou art the Garden of the World, and Home Of all Art yields, and Nature can decree; Even in thy Desart, what is like to thee? Thy very Weeds are beautiful – thy waste More rich than other Climes’ fertility; Thy wreck a Glory – and thy ruin graced With an immaculate charm which cannot be defaced. (CHP IV st.26)

His concession that Italy’s “very Weeds are beautiful” in fact deprives them of the lively weediness in which, in Beppo, he rubs our noses. Childe Harold IV keeps the daily moral squalor of Italy – in the midst of which it was written – at a marketable distance. In Beppo (and in Don Juan and The Vision of Judgement) we still see a performance, but it’s a more self-aware and self-satirical performance: God help us all! God help me too! I am God knows as helpless as the Devil can wish – And not a whit more difficult to damn Than is to bring to land a late-hooked fish, Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb – Not that I’m fit for such a noble dish – As one day will be that immortal Fry Of almost every body born to die. – (TVOJ st.15)

This couldn’t be said in the idiom of Childe Harold. In fact, Beppo is a parody of Byron’s earlier work, up to and including Childe Harold IV, with which it was written “back-to-back”. Childe Harold is wide open to parody and mockery of all kinds – and was parodied at once. Cantos I and II are sent up by James and Horace Smith in Cui Bono? – their version of what Harold might say at the opening of the new Drury Lane Theatre: Sons of Parnassus! whom I view above, Not laurel crown’d, but clad in rusty black, Not spurring Pegasus through Tempe’s grove, But pacing Grub-street on a jaded hack, What reams of foolscap, while your brains ye rack, Ye mar to make again! for sure, ere long, Condemn’d to tread the bard’s time-sanction’d track, Ye all shall join the bailiff-haunted throng, And reproduce in rags the rags ye blot in song.

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So fares the follower in the Muses’ train, He toils to starve, and only lives in death; We slight him till our patronage is vain, Then round his skeleton a garland wreathe, And o’er his bones an empty requiem breathe – Oh! with what tragic horror would he start, (Could he be conjur’d from the grave beneath) To find the stage again a Thespian cart, And elephants and colts down trample Shakespear’s art? (Cui Bono? sts.IX-X)

Of this, Byron wrote to Murray: Tell the author “I forgive him were he twenty times our satirist,” & think his imitations not at all inferior to the famous ones of Hawkins Browne. He must be a man of very lively wit, & much less scurrilous than Wits often are, altogether I very much admire the performance & wish it all success. –7

Sir Walter Scott, having given the third canto a sympathetic review in the Quarterly, unburdened himself privately thus: By the way, I have just received Childe Harold, part 3rd. Lord Byron has more avowedly identified himself with his personage than upon former occasions, and in truth does not affect to separate them. It is wilder and less sweet, I think, than the first part, but contains even darker and more powerful pourings forth of the spirit which boils within him. I question whether there ever lived a man who, without looking abroad for subjects excepting as they produced an effect on himself, has contrived to render long poems turning almost entirely upon the feelings, character, and emotions of the author, so deeply interesting. We gazed on the powerful and ruined mind which he presents us as on a shattered castle, within whose walls, once intended for nobler guests, sorcerers and wild demons are supposed to hold their Sabbaths. There is something dreadful in reflecting that one gifted so much above his fellow-creatures, should thus labour under some strange mental malady that destroys his peace of mind and happiness, altho’ it cannot quench the fire of his genius. I fear the termination will be fatal in one way or other, for it seems impossible that human nature can support the constant working of an imagination so dark and so strong. Suicide or 7: B. to Murray, October 17th 1812 (text from NLS Ms.43487; BLJ II 228-9).

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Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage utter insanity is not unlikely to close the scene. “Orandum sit,” as the sapine Partridge says, “ut sit mens sana in corpore sano”.8

Scott has made the mistake of judging Childe Harold to be sincere. In Canto IV Byron would have us see him as a kind of volcano (see line 663, and then lines 3-5 of deleted stanza 135a); a force of nature against which the normal standards of decency and morals don’t apply. The foolishness of it is encapsulated by Peacock in the figure of Mr Cypress in Nightmare Abbey, who says, in a speech made up entirely from quotations from Childe Harold IV: I have no hope for myself or for others. Our life is a false nature; it is not in the harmony of things; it is an all-blasting upas, whose root is earth, and whose leaves are the skies which rain their poison-dews upon mankind. We wither from our youth; we gasp with unslaked thirst for unattainable good; lured from the first to the last by phantoms – love, fame, ambition, avarice – all idle, and all ill – one meteor of many names, that vanishes in the smoke of death. MR. FLOSKY A most delightful speech, Mr. Cypress. A most amiable and instructive philosophy. You have only to impress its truth on the minds of all living men, and life will then, indeed, be the desert and the solitude …9

Or, MR CYPRESS Sir, I have quarrelled with my wife; and a man who has quarrelled with his wife is absolved from all duty to his country. I have written an ode to tell the people as much, and they may take it as they list. SCYTHROP Do you suppose, if Brutus had quarrelled with his wife, he would have given it as a reason to Cassius for having nothing 8: Letter to J.B.S.Morritt, November 26th 1816, Grierson (ed.), Letters of Sir Walter Scott, 1815-17, pp.296-7. 9: Peacock, Nightmare Abbey, XI.

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to do with his enterprise? Or would Cassius have been satisfied with such an excuse? MR FLOSKY Brutus was a senator; so is our dear friend: but the cases are different. Brutus had some hope of political good: Mr Cypress has none. How should he, after what we have seen in France? 10

Peacock’s reaction to Childe Harold IV had been one of disgust. On May 30th 1818 (not long after the poem’s publication) he wrote to Shelley I have almost finished Nightmare Abbey. I think it necessary to “make a stand” against the encroachments of black bile. The fourth canto of Childe Harold is really too bad. I cannot consent to be auditor tantum of this systematical “poisoning” of the “mind” of the “Reading Public.”11

The challenge which the poem’s admirers have to face lies in the question, what good qualities does it contain which Peacock’s satire misses? (Byron described Peacock, whom he suspected of having written John Bull’s Letter, as “a very clever fellow”.)12 Don Juan and the other two ottava rima poems can be imitated, but not parodied: their own internal current of self-deflation is too strong. The proprietorial Hobhouse, who wasted much time and ink “annotating” Childe Harold IV, admired it above all other works by his friend: “After all,” [he wrote to Murray, à propos of Marino Faliero] “if it be not presumptuous in me to say so, I should venture to assert that tragedy writing is not Lord Byron’s fort – That is to say that it will not turn out to be the best thing that he can do – According to my poor way of thinking the Corsair & the IVth Canto will always bear away the palm …”13 After a first glance at Beppo (“Byron has imitated Frere’s imitation in a description of Venice and done it well”),14 he expressed no further opinion of it; never refers to The Vision of Judgement until decades after Byron’s death, and then regrets it; and doesn’t want Don Juan published at all.

10: Ibid., XI. 11: The Letters of Thomas Love Peacock, ed. Nicholas A. Joukovsky, Oxford 2001, I 123-4. 12: B. to Murray, June 29th 1821 (text from B.L.Ashley 2700; BLJ VIII 145). 13: Text from John Murray Archive, 50 Albemarle Street. 14: Hobhouse diary, October 9th 1817.

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————— Cantos III is famous for its portraits of Byron’s idols: Napoleon, Voltaire, Gibbon and Rousseau. In fact they’re all displaced self-portraits, ways of implying that the spirits of these great men unite and live on in Byron. First, Napoleon, with whom we know that, in his more unbalanced moods (and sometimes when out of them), Byron identified: There sunk the greatest – nor the worst of men, Whose Spirit, antithetically mixt, One moment of the mightiest, and again On little objects with like firmness fixed; Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt, Thy throne had still been thine, or never been; For Daring made thy rise as fall: thou seek’st Even now to re-assume the imperial mien, And shake again the world, the Thunderer of the Scene. (CHP III st.36)

We may agree that in the antithetical mixture and the extremity in all things, the avoidance of “betwixtness”, Byron and Bonaparte had much in common – and that Byron aspired to beome a man of action (“And shake … the world”). Voltaire: The One – was fire and fickleness, a Child, Most mutable in wishes, but in Mind, A Wit as various – gay, grave, sage, or wild – Historian – Bard – Philosopher – combined; He multiplied himself among Mankind, The Proteus of their talents – But his own Breathed most in Ridicule – which, as the Wind, Blew where it listed, laying all things prone – Now to o’erthrow a fool, and now to shake a throne.

Byron fits this, too – the fire and fickleness, the variety of wit: and though his talent in verse has yet to show itself supreme in Ridicule, it will as soon as the witty Beppo springs fully-armed from the monstrous growth that is Childe Harold IV. Gibbon: The Other, deep and slow, exhausting thought, And hiving wisdom with each studious year, In meditation dwelt, with Learning wrought, And shaped his weapon with an edge severe,

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Sapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer; The Lord of Irony – that master-spell, Which stung his foes to wrath, which grew from fear, And doomed him to the Zealot’s ready Hell, Which answers to all doubts so eloquently well. (CHP III sts106-7)

We know that Byron’s wisdom was based on many studious years’ work, a fact he tried to hide. However, as with the Voltaire comparison, his role as the Lord of Irony isn’t assumed yet – but it will as soon as Childe Harold is out of the way. Last, Rousseau: Here the self-torturing Sophist, wild Rousseau, The Apostle of Affliction, he who threw Enchantment over Passion, and from Woe Wrung overwhelming Eloquence, first drew The breath which made him wretched; yet he knew How to make Madness beautiful, and cast O’er erring deeds and thoughts a heavenly hue Of words, like Sunbeams, dazzling as they past The eyes, which o’er them shed tears feelingly and fast. His love was Passion’s Essence – as a tree On fire by lightning, with ethereal flame Kindled he was, and blasted; for to be Thus, and enamoured, were in him the same. But his was not the love of living dame, Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, But of ideal Beauty,15 which became In him existence, and o’erflowing teems Along his burning page – distempered though it seems. (CHP III sts.77-8)

I’m always struck by the fact that Byron seems not to know Le Contrat Social, with its famous opening, “L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers”: perhaps its radicalism was too much for his nonegalitarian soul. Perhaps he just didn’t know it. Whatever the case, he knows Rousseau only as the author of the Confessions, and of Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse – a copy of which he and Shelley took around Lake Geneva with them on the trip which forms one part of the basis for Childe Harold III. He wants us to read him, too, as “the Apostle of Affliction”, 15: Compare CHP IV 1454, and contrast Beppo 13, 2.

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wringing overwhelming Eloquence from Woe. He too is making Madness beautiful (see Scott’s letter above), and is already, in Manfred (a work gestating as he writes these lines) imagining one in love with ideal Beauty and not living dame – though Astarte is “without a tomb”, and may never have existed. Even the Dying Gladiator in Canto IV can be interpreted as Byron’s grandiose commentary on his own fate, victim of one of England’s “periodical fits of morality”: I see before me the Gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand – his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers Agony, And his drooped head sinks gradually low – And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow From the red gash, fall heavy, one by one, Like the first of a thunder-shower; and now The Arena swims around him – he is gone, Ere ceased the inhuman Shout which hailed the wretch who won. He heard it, but he heeded not – his eyes Were with his heart, and that was far away; He recked not of the life he lost, nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There where his young Barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother – he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday – All this rushed with his blood – Shall he expire And unavenged? Arise! ye Goths, and glut your ire! (CHP IV sts.140-1)

There’s a big distance between 13, Piccadilly Terrace and “his rude hut by the Danube”, just as there is between little Augusta Ada, Annabella, and “his young Barbarians all at play” and “their Dacian mother”. But the strange thing is that the antithetical Byron did regret parting from his family, even as he breathed a sigh of relief at never having to see them again. ————— It shouldn’t be possible to read Childe Harold I and II with the innocent amazement its first readers experienced in 1812. We know too much about Byron’s eastern journey from other documents, and can tell when he’s

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pulling the wool over our eyes. We know, for example, what lies behind his coyness in the note to Canto II stanza 38 (my italics here): Of Albania Gibbon remarks, that a country “within sight of Italy is less known than the interior of America.”16 Circumstances, of little consequence to mention, led Mr. Hobhouse and myself into that country before we visited any other part of the Ottoman dominions;17 and with the exception of Major Leake,18 then officially resident at Joannina, no other Englishmen have ever advanced beyond the capital into the interior, as that gentleman very lately assured me.

We know that, when they passed through Joannina on their way to see Ali Pasha at Tepaleen, Leake was so unfriendly that he wouldn’t receive them; we know that their mission – to reassure Ali now that the English had gone back on their word and taken the Ionians islands, which Ali had thought they were going to allow him to take – was compromising to Leake. We are aware, from Cecil Y. Lang’s much-anthologised essay Narcissus Jilted, of the strong possibility that both Byron and Hobhouse were debauched by Ali and his hyacinths at Tepaleen, and we know that Byron wrote it up even more coyly in his original version of Canto II stanza 64: Childe Harold with that chief held colloquy, Yet what they spake, it boots not to repeat, Converse may little charm strange ear, or eye; – Four days he rested in that spacious seat Of Moslem luxury …

As with the facts behind Cantos III and IV, relating to his marriage, we are (or should be) aware (we have no excuse for not being aware) that behind the poem (“the work of a masterful because eloquently duplicitous 16: This sentence does not occur in Decline and Fall. But see Pouqueville, Voyages, III, 2: “… un pays placé aux portes de l’Europe, et inconnu jusqu’à present, ou sur lequel on n’a publié que des choses vagues et mensongères.” 17: Why two inexperienced Englishmen should have ventured into Europe’s equivalent of the Belgian Congo must have been a question readers asked themselves. H. writes (in his book, not his diary) that the availability of the brig which took them was “one of those accidents which often, in spite of preconcerted schemes, decide the conduct of travellers” (Journey, I, 1). 18: William Martin Leake (1777-1860) classical topographer and numismatist. He had been engaged on English diplomatic business in the Near East since 1799. He was consul in Joannina.

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rhetorician”)19 there are acres and acres of sleaze, which his skill with Spenserians serves to camouflage. Three essays in the 2013 Byron Journal,20 by Bernard Beatty, Michael O’Neill and Timothy Webb, were all delivered at a 2012 conference designed largely around the bicentenary of the publication of the first two cantos. Each skirts or ignores the problem of the work’s veracity – despite the comment by O’Neill, just quoted. Beatty’s essay can do nothing else, for his aim is to re-create the experience of the poem’s first readers, who had only the poem and its notes to go on, not even Hobhouse’s book A Journey Though Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey (1813), let alone his unexpurgated diary, or Byron’s letters home. O’Neill, though he seems to make a huge concession with the phrase quoted above, doesn’t follow it up, and is content to analyse the poem’s theme of departure. Webb, analysing the poems’ notes, plays the standard game, by referring to “Jerome J. McGann’s generally magisterial Oxford edition” (p.132: my italics), but then writing things like “[McGann’s] logic of editorial division is sometimes hard to follow” (p.136)”. He also plays the other standard game by referring to “the canto’s notable philhellenism” (p.140) while quoting all that can be quoted, namely Byron’s non-stop search for excuses for Greek depravity. When searching for evidence of the poet’s great admiration for the Turks, on the other hand, he has no trouble finding it. It’s as if we don’t want to know – we want to be “bammed and hummed” by Byron.

19: Michael O’Neill, ‘Without a Sigh he Left’: Byron’s Poetry of Departure in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Cantos I and II, BJ Vol 41 No 2 (2013) p.115. 20: BJ Vol 41 No 2 (2013) pp.101-44.

BYRON’S FAN LETTERS

Byron found his fan letters amusing – in retrospect. In 1822 he writes to Augusta: I have also had a love letter from Pimlico from a lady whom I never saw in my life – but who hath fallen in love with me for having written Don Juan! – I suppose that she is either mad or nau. – do you remember Constantia and Echo – and la Swissesse – and all my other inamorate – when I was “gentle and juvenile – curly and gay”1 – and was myself in love with a certain Silly person – – But I am grown very good now – and think all such things vanities which is a very proper opinion at thirty-four. –2

“ … But I am grown very good now” seems to imply that when he was “gentle and juvenile – curly and gay” he was “nau” with Constantia and Echo – and la Swissesse”, answering their fan letters and perhaps even yielding to their inky blandishments. It has been suggested that we can’t appreciate Byron unless we see him through the eyes of such as “Constantia and Echo – and la Swissesse”. We must acknowledge the “fan” lurking within even the most beady-eyed literary critic: … the following pages will encourage a reading of Byron that refuses to close down on the pleasurable fantasies inspired by even the most “pedestrian” of muses, the muse of popular culture.3 We are still incapable of discussing his work without first indulging in a mental picture of the man, either striding toward a helpless (female) victim, cloak blowing and shirt Unpublished. 1: B. quotes Moore’s translation of Horace, Ode xi from Book II. 2: B. to Augusta Leigh, November 7th 1822: (text from NLS Acc.12604 / 4151; BLJ X 28-30). 3: Ghislaine McDayter, Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture, SUNY Press, 2009, p.28.

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Byron’s Fan Letters open, or desperately trying to disentangle himself from his adoring herd. What, I would ask, do we get out of this?4

Ghislaine McDayter, author of these two quotations, was hampered in writing her book by the temporary closure of the John Murray Archive in London.5 Had she been given proper access to the Archive, she would have found the following: Septbr 12th 1814 A young lady of deservedly unsullied fame who to use Ld Byron’s descriptive lines is “The wither’d frame, the ruined mind, “The wrack by” misery (not passion or guilt) left behind “A shriveld scroll, a scatter’d leaf, “Sear’d by the autumn blast of grief.”6 Has been led not from any motive but an irresistible inclination to address a man whose character as far as she has learnt from public report (and she knows of Ld Byron by no other) she dares not admire, and whom she never saw, but she cannot read his works with the attention she has done, without believing his mind would sympathize with her own, and feeling herself strongly interested for his sorrows and early disappointments. She suggests the following questions to be answered with truth from his own heart only to himself. Does he regret an error of his youth? Has his lines any the most distant allusion to himself, “His heart was form’d for softness – warp’d to wrong – “Betray’d too early, and beguil’d too long.”7 Has he a mind that possesses the power of friendship? and that feels the ingratitude, and malice of an unfeeling, prejudiced, and misjudging, world? Has he been “belied” – Does he seek a virtuous, innocent and faithful friend? If after having read thus far Ld Byron finds the being that addresses him is mistaken in her idear [sic] of his character, she hopes he will have honour and generosity enough to comply with her first request which is to burn this without perusing its contents further. If not. – But she can only add she has not the presumption or any inclination to attract the notice of Ld 4: Ibid., p.4. 5: Information from Professor McDayter. 6: The Giaour, ll.1253-6. 7: The Corsair, ll.1829-30.

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Byron, although her rank in life, and fortune, would entitle her to move in the same circle. She has been bred in “disappointment’s school,” secluded from a world that youthful wishes led her to believe contained many charms, for those engaged in its busy scenes, but the waking dreams of youth are vanished, never to be realized. To Ld Byron she must even remain conceal’d, yet that some notice was taken of this address, and it did not meet with the silent contempt it may appear to deserve may cast a gleam of sunshine over the almost broken heart of Rosalie The sunday observer she can overlook with attention, and will seek with anxious solicitude for the very few lines that can meet her eye through such a medium, bearing the signature of Antonio, to whom she may perhaps, some time more fully explain her situation8

The letter is at once naïve and impertinent (“Does he regret an error of his youth”?), and shows a wonderful ability to take from Byron’s poems just what the writer wants to find – an echo of her own adolescent angst – and no more. The Giaour is, we protest, an action poem about a girl, and the conflict between her two men, a renegade Christian and a Moslem. The Corsair is about a pirate, his Moslem enemy, and his two women. “Rosalie” ignores the narratives – has she even noticed them? She has fallen into the trap described by Corin Throsby: Byron … flirted with his readers’ attention by including just enough biographical information in his poetry to encourage them to believe that his characters were thinly disguised versions of himself.9

Three weeks later the terrified Rosalie writes again, telling Byron to forget the whole thing: Octbr 6th 1814 Eccentric and extraordinary your Lordship must think me and I believe with truth, however that be, you must be aware I have a great deal of resolution and it has required much before I could bring myself to again address you, but I

8: “Rosalie” to B., September 12th 1814: (text from NLS Ms.43523). 9: Corin Throsby, Being Neither Here Nor There: Byron and the Art of Flirtation, in Hopps (ed.) Byron’s Ghosts (Liverpool 2013), p.203.

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Byron’s Fan Letters have conquered, or rather folly has conquered prudence, and I take up my pen to ask have you received my letter? My only motive for now wishing to know is to save myself from suspense, for I find my eyes wander over the paper without the hope of meeting what I seek. And I think it due to myself even in the fictitious character I have assumed to say that however a romantic enthusiasm may have induced me to act with regard to your lordship so contrary to the dictates of prudence, perhaps of modesty, I have not assumed that character or endeavoured to enter into a secret correspondence from an idea of drawing from you any knowledge of your former life or habits more than you liked to disclose. Of my own situation I gave you some hints, and have only to add no part of them were fictitious but the signature. I must again repeat my wish that you will let me know by the sunday observer if my letters have or have not been received. And to intreat should anything now or at any future time direct your Lordship’s suspitions to me you will allow your humanity to which I appeal to triumph over every other consideration, and bury forever in your bosom your ever having received these letters. Do not betray me my Lord, if it were in {your} power and you should infamy and disgrace. – but my heart sickens with the thoughth [sic]. I trust to your honour and the hope that I am and shall long remain only known by the name of Rosalie10

Her panic is comical – it’s unlikely that Byron had given her first letter more than a glance. How, in any case, can he betray her, when he doesn’t even know who she is? None of the other fan letters give any more confidence than do Rosalie’s that Byron’s poems have been read, let alone understood. We can’t read him through their eyes because they show so little evidence of having read him.

10: “Rosalie” to B., October 6th 1814: (text from NLS Ms.43512).

GRASPING THE NETTLE: BYRON, THE TURKS, AND THE GREEKS

In Malcolm Kelsall’s 2013 International Byron Society Conference paper,1 he puts in a good word for the Ottoman Empire: As in ancient Rome, religious tolerance was an instrument of State. Jews fled persecution in Europe for the security of the Empire. Likewise, the Eastern Orthodox Church was more secure under Ottoman rule than under the Roman Catholic Venetian empire. The structures of power within the Empire were permeable. Slaves became rulers; Romaioi governors. Adoption of the State religion (Sunni Islam) opened all doors. Ottoman government at its best provided an ordered structure for Society across an immense geopolitical region. This favourable characterization of the Ottomans is not familiar among the historians of the Empire whom Byron read. They usually portray the contemporary Ottoman Empire as tyrannical, corrupt and in rapid decline. Inevitably, Christian historians were biased against Islam. Byronism has been readily contextualized in this interpretative matrix. The mountains look on Marathon and the lonely poet dreams of a people freed from an evil empire. (p.2)

The Demonisation of the Oriental Other is still with us today, with its cartload of displaced guilt and self-loathing. Since the Ottomans divided what it still pleases us, in 2014, to call “Iraq”, into three sensible provinces (north: Kurdish; middle: Sunni; south: Shi-ite), it does indeed seem time for a revaluation. We are led astray by David Lean and Peter O’Toole.2 Just as there were plenty of Greeks fighting for Mehmed II when he took Unpublished. 1: BYRON AND THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE

2: I am reported by Gavin Sourgen (BJ Vol.41 No 2013, p.189) as having said at the 2013 conference that in Lawrence of Arabia, the movie, Omar Sharif is shot through the head. Of course I said the opposite: Sharif shoots the other man through the head. It’s only one of the most famous sequences in film history.

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Grasping the Nettle: Byron, the Turks, and the Greeks

Constantinople in 1453, plenty of Scotsmen fighting with Cumberland at Culloden, and and plenty of protestants fighting for James II at the Battle of the Boyne, so there were plenty of Arabs fighting against T.E.Lawrence. In the same way, as Byron and Hobhouse found, there were plenty of Italians happy to work with the Austrians, and, as illustrated in Thomas Hope’s novel Anastasius, more than enough Greeks quite happy to collaborate with the Turks. Anastasius depicts the Ottoman Empire as an area of farcical dysfunction. Kelsall, however, ignores the farcical dysfunctionality: What the novel ‘shows’ is that one may live happily, prosperously and virtuously anywhere within the Ottoman Empire without troubling about nationalism, sectarianism, or the romantic discourse of ‘freedom’ and ‘tyranny’. (p.8)

This is almost true, as far as “nationalism” and “sectarianism” are concerned – but Anastasius himself hardly lives “happily, prosperously and virtuously”. And here’s a thumbnail version of Anastasius’ reflections about the Ottoman Empire: If the Coobd cheated the Multezim, did not the Multezim in the same way cheat the Caimakam, and the Caimakam the Kiachef, and the Kiachef the Bey, and the Bey the Schaich-el-belled, and the Schaich-el-belled the Pasha, and the Pasha the Porte, and the Porte the Sultan? who … cheated Allah himself, when he assumed the title of Kaliph of the faithful (Anastasius II, 39-40).

Still, Kelsall reads the conventional narrative of fifth-century Athens with some scepticism: … it is preposterous to celebrate Persian withdrawal as representing the ‘freedom’ of ‘Greece’. That is to yield to what even Hobhouse described as ‘the daring mendacity of the Grecian annals’. Persian withdrawal merely liberated the Hellenic city states to push the Peloponnesian War to its disastrous conclusion. See Thucydides. Or consider Mitford. The Golden Age of Pericles was a period of ‘virulent enmity’ among the Hellenes. The Peloponnesian war was the culmination of the ‘piratical, thieving, and murdering kind of petty wars to which the Greeks at all times and in all parts were strongly addicted.’ He compares the ‘liberal and mild’ governance of the Persians. (p.3)

The implications of this analysis for Byron’s last expedition “to liberate Greece from Turkish tyranny”, he’s too discreet to describe.

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————— The myth of Byron’s philhellenism has had too much ink, money, hot air and blood spilled all over it ever to die. But the evidence against it is in everything he writes. Greece as a myth, and Greece as a location, he adored. But as for the people, his praises went to the Turks every time – in ways of which Malcolm Kelsall would approve: In all money transactions with the Moslems, I ever found the strictest honour, the highest disinterestedness. In transacting business with them, there are none of those dirty peculations, under the name of interest, difference of exchange, commission, etc., etc., uniformly found in applying to a Greek consul to cash bills, even on the first houses in Pera. With regard to presents, an established custom in the East, you will rarely find yourself a loser; as one worth acceptance is generally returned by another of similar value— a horse, or a shawl. In the capital and at court the citizens and courtiers are formed in the same school with those of Christianity; but there does not exist a more honourable, friendly, and highspirited character than the true Turkish provincial Aga, or Moslem country gentleman. It is not meant here to designate the governors of towns, but those Agas who, by a kind of feudal tenure, possess lands and houses, of more or less extent, in Greece and Asia Minor. The lower orders are in as tolerable discipline as the rabble in countries with greater pretensions to civilisation. A Moslem, in walking the streets of our country-towns, would be more incommoded in England than a Frank in a similar situation in Turkey. Regimentals are the best travelling dress. The best accounts of the religion and different sects of Islamism may be found in D’Ohsson’s French; of their manners, etc., perhaps in Thornton’s English. The Ottomans, with all their defects, are not a people to be despised. Equal at least to the Spaniards, they are superior to the Portuguese. If it be difficult to pronounce what they are, we can at least say what they are not: they are not treacherous, they are not cowardly, they do not burn heretics, they are not assassins, nor has an enemy advanced to their capital. They are faithful to their sultan till he becomes unfit to govern, and devout to their God without an inquisition. Were they driven from St. Sophia to-morrow, and the French or Russians enthroned in

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Grasping the Nettle: Byron, the Turks, and the Greeks their stead, it would become a question whether Europe would gain by the exchange. England would certainly be the loser. With regard to that ignorance of which they are so generally, and sometimes justly accused, it may be doubted, always excepting France and England, in what useful points of knowledge they are excelled by other nations. Is it in the common arts of life? In their manufactures? Is a Turkish sabre inferior to a Toledo? or is a Turk worse clothed or lodged, or fed and taught, than a Spaniard? Are their Pachas worse educated than a Grandee? or an Effendi than a Knight of St. Jago? I think not. I remember Mahmout, the grandson of Ali Pacha, asking whether my fellow-traveller and myself were in the upper or lower House of Parliament. Now, this question from a boy of ten years old proved that his education had not been neglected. It may be doubted if an English boy at that age knows the difference of the Divan from a College of Dervises; but I am very sure a Spaniard does not. How little Mahmout, surrounded as he had been entirely by his Turkish tutors, had learned that there was such a thing as a Parliament, it were useless to conjecture, unless we suppose that his instructors did not confine his studies to the Koran. (Note to CHP II)

When I mentioned this and other pro-Turkish notes at another conference, someone commented that only I read such things – as if to do so were offensive. History, told from the viewpoint of the victors, quickly becomes myth. If there are any Persian accounts of the fifth-century conflicts, they were never taught in English public schools. On the other hand … “For Greeks a blush, for Greece a tear”: Whoever goes into Greece at present should do it as Mrs Fry went into Newgate – not in the expectation of meeting with any especial indication of existing probity – but in the hope that time and better treatment will reclaim the present burglarious and larcenous tendencies which have followed this General Gaol delivery. – When the limbs of the Greeks are a little less stiff from the shackles of four centuries – they will not march so much “as if they had gyves on their legs”.3 – – At present the Chains are broken indeed; but the links are still clanking – and the Saturnalia is still too recent to have converted the Slave into a sober Citizen. – The worst of them 3: Henry IV I, IV ii 40 app.: … the villains march wide betwixt their legs, as if they had gyves on. The quotation makes B. into Falstaff, and the Greeks his followers, of whom the jail has just been emptied.

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is that (to use a coarse but the only expression that will not fall short of the truth) they are such d–––d liars; – there never was such an incapacity for veracity shown since Eve lied in Paradise. – One of them found fault the other day with the English language – because it had so few shades of a Negative – whereas a Greek can so modify a No – to a yes – and vice versa – by the slippery qualities of his language – that prevarication may be carried to any extent and still leave a loop=hole through which perjury may slip without being perceived. – – – This was the Gentleman’s own talk – and is only to be doubted because in the words of the Syllogism – “Now Epimenides was a Cretan”. But they may be mended by and bye. – (Cephalonia Journal)

Byron is even dismissive of Greek dancing in comparison with Albanian: Dervish excelled in the dance of his country, conjectured to be a remnant of the ancient Pyrrhic; be that as it may, it is manly, and requires wonderful agility. It is very distinct from the stupid Romaika, the dull roundabout of the Greeks, of which our Athenian party had so many specimens. (CHP II note)

The friendly letters he received from his Turkish acquaintances have been translated and printed (see Byron and Orientalism, CSP 2006, pp.275-96) but are never commented on. The unseaworthy boat must not be rocked. Lady Blessington sums up the frigid way in which, prior to his last expedition, Byron discussed the Greeks: There is something so exciting in the idea of the greatest poet of his day sacrificing his fortune, his occupations, his enjoyments, – in short, offering up on the altar of Liberty all the immense advantages which station, fortune and genius can bestow, that it is impossible to reflect on it without admiration; but when one hears this same person calmly talk of the worthlessness of the people he proposes to make those sacrifices for, the loans he means to advance, the uniforms he intends to wear, entering into petty details, and always with perfect sang froid, one’s admiration evaporates, and the action loses all its charms, though the real merit of it still remains. Perhaps Byron wishes to show that his going to Greece is more an affair of principle than of feeling, and as such, more entitled to respect, though perhaps less likely to excite warmer feelings. However this may be, his whole manner and

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Grasping the Nettle: Byron, the Turks, and the Greeks conversation on the subject are calculated to chill the admiration such an enterprise ought to create, and to reduce it to a more ordinary standard.4

In his early narratives – his “Assyrian” tales – Turks are sometimes the bad guys: Seyd and Giaffir, primarily; however, in The Giaour, the protagonist, if anything, over-identifies with his Islamic foe. And in Don Juan III, The Isles of Greece can only be read as philhellenic if you remove its context, ignore its singer, and cut half its lines – not that people aren’t prepared to do these things. Byron’s admiration for things Moslem was social, not literary or religious. I find very little evidence of his reading from “D’Ohsson’s French” or “Thornton’s English” in the Turkish Tales: Islamic streetcredibility is not there aimed at. There was available to him the best translation, so far, of the Qur’an into English – that of George Sale (1734), but it appears in none of the library sale catalogues, and he shows no knowledge of it.5 To give the moslem sections of Don Juan a better grounding in fact, he used Tully’s Tripoli (see chapter below on plagiarism) but only borrowed as much as is needed for his interiors. When Baba the eunuch swears on or by “The holy Camel’s hump, besides the Koran” (VI 102 7-8), it’s a facetious joke – there is no holy Camel in Islam (though Allah does occasionally bless camels). Of Juan’s loves, the Spanish Julia and the Greek Haidee both have North African blood. Gulbeyaz seems entirely Moslem: but she doesn’t succeed with Juan (Dudù, who, by accident, does, appears to be wholly Greek: we hear of “Her Attic forehead, and her Phidian nose” – VI 42 4). The erotic effect is thus ambivalent (though Juan never has any choice in his lovers). What of the Grand Turk himself, whose “government at its best” (Malcolm Kelsall’s words, my italics) “provided an ordered structure for Society across an immense geopolitical region”? Byron’s comical version depicts his complacency and indifference: He went to Mosque in state, and said his prayers With more than “Oriental Scrupulosity;” He left to his Vizier all State affairs, And showed but little royal curiosity; 4: Blessington pp.85-6. 5: The 1807 Reading List has “Mahomet, whose Koran contains most sublime poetical passages far surpassing European Poetry” (CMP 1) seems adolescent bluff. See also Cochran, Byron’s Romantic Politics (CSP 2011) pp.145-6.

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I know not if he had domestic cares – No process proved connubial animosity – Four wives and twice five hundred maids unseen Were ruled as calmly as a Christian Queen. – If now and then there happened a slight slip, Little was heard of criminal or crime; The Story scarcely passed a single lip, The Sack and Sea had settled all in time, From which the secret nobody could rip; The Public knew no more than does this rhyme; No Scandals made the daily press a curse; Morals were better, and the fish no worse. (Don Juan V sts.148-9)

“… ruled as calmly as a Christian Queen” and “No Scandals made the daily press a curse” give the game away – we are to see the Sultan as an improved, oriental version of George IV. East is West, only more peaceful. No troublesome queens here. Byron’s comical-educational agenda – derived in part from Lady Mary Wortley Montagu – is to show the English that they have much more in common with Turkey than they admit. It’s the same motive which impelled him to put the beautifullywritten letter from the Bey of Corinth as a fold-out into Childe Harold. The Turks, he wants his readers to see, are civilised (at least, as civilised as the English). One of the most outstanding episodes in Don Juan is the uncomical siege and ransacking of a Turkish city by Christians. Here Byron’s models are Ariosto, Pulci, and of course Tasso: he emulates the first two (not the third) in his lament: But let me put an end unto my theme – There was an end of Ismail – hapless town! Far flashed her burning towers o’er Danube’s stream, And redly ran his blushing waters down; The horrid War-whoop and the shriller Scream Rose still; but fainter were the thunders grown; Of forty thousand who had manned her wall, Some hundreds breathed – the rest were silent all! (Don Juan VIII st.127)

But he had a more recent example of “The horrid War-whoop and the shriller Scream” than Ismail. In October 1821 the predominantly Turkish town of Tripolitza had been sacked by the Greek forces of the warlord Theodore Colocotronis. William St. Clair describes the event:

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Grasping the Nettle: Byron, the Turks, and the Greeks On 5 October the Greeks broke in and for two days the town was given over to the mob. Upwards of ten thousand Turks were put to death. European officers who were present described the scenes of horror. Prisoners who were suspected of having concealed their money were tortured. Their arms and legs were cut off and they were slowly roasted over fires. Pregnant women were cut open, their heads cut off, and dogs’ heads stuck between their legs. From Friday to Sunday the air was filled with the sound of screams and laughter before Colocotrones called a halt. One Greek boasted that he had personally killed ninety people. The Jewish colony was systematically tortured. About two thousand prisoners, mainly women and children, were stripped and driven to a valley outside the town and then killed. The heap of bones could still be seen years later. For weeks afterwards starving Turkish children running helplessly about the ruins were being cut down and shot at by the exultant Greeks. The dead lay where they fell. An intolerable stench soon arose and flocks of scavenging birds settled on the town. Wild dogs roamed through the smouldering ruins feeding on the putrid corpses. The wells were poisoned by the bodies that had been thrown in. Soon plague broke out and spread so virulently that during the rest of the war the Peloponnese was never free of it. Thousands of Greeks enriched themselves with plunder and retired to their villages, leading a few Turkish women as slaves. Heaps of blood-stained clothing, arms, furniture, everything of value that could be found was put on sale. The price of slaves fell so low that they could not be sold, and all but the youngest women were killed off. The proceeds were divided amongst the various captains. But the greatest share of the booty went to Colocotrones. Fifty-two horses carried off the money, arms, and jewellery from the Turkish governor’s palace which Colocotrones carefully preserved for himself. He became immensely rich, his money was sent to a bank in the Ionian Islands. He now had the resources to maintain himself and a band of men as an independent force for years to come.6

“Human beings,” writes George Finlay, “can rarely have perpetrated so many deeds of cruelty on an equal number of their fellow creatures as were perpetrated by their conquerors on this occasion”.7

6: St.Clair I, p.45. 7: Finlay, vol. VI p.218.

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Byron never refers to the pillage of Tripolitza. He may have been told about it by Alexander Mavrocordatos, who was at Pisa with him, and was no friend to Colocotronis. Don Juan VII and VIII were written in mid1822, shortly after the event. It’s hard not to believe that in his depiction of the Russian barbarity of thirty years ago, he does not intend an allusion to the Greek barbarity of his own day. When Byron went on his last journey in the year following, he knew what he was walking into.

BYRON AND ALI PACHA

Byron’s mother often told him that he was in danger of becoming like his father (“… she flies into a fit of phrenzy, upbraids me as if I was the most undutiful wretch in existence, rakes up the ashes of my father, abuses him, says I shall be a true Byrrone, which is the worst epithet she can invent.”).1 He was terrified that she might be right, and looked about for alternative fathers to bond with. His chronic inability to sack his lackadaisical lawyer John Hanson is traceable to Hanson’s hospitality in taking him in and making him one of the family – something he never felt himself to be when he was at home with Mrs Byron. His obdurate loyalty to William Gifford (“my literary father”),2 despite the obvious discrepancy between both their politics and their literary standards, is touching in its longevity. But weirdest of all is what we could have suspected, but would never have quite believed, if the following had not been unearthed (it’s from a letter written by Teresa Guiccioli on October 22nd 1820): Ali – Bassa – quel tuo Amico – Padre – quel cuore tenero – liberale – forse è morto – – è una perdita pel Mondo – pe’buoni patriotti – e per le finanze de’suoi domini – (perchè la popolazione si accrescerà), irreparabile. Ma davvero Amor mio si dispiace a te, dispiacerà anche a me la sua morte – – nulla però potrà farla dispiacere a Pierino! – in ogni modo però se fosse morte nella maniera che si dice sarebbe il punto più luminoso della Sua vita. – Ma perchè ti ho fatto queste ciarle? io non lo sò – – ma io credo p una magica potenza che non mi permette quando scrivo, o parlo a te, di star ne’limiti della discrezione. Perdona Amor Mio! [Ali – Pasha – that Friend – Father of yours – that tender heart – liberal – perhaps he is dead – – it is a loss to the World – to good patriots – and to the finances of his domains (because the population will increase), irreparably. – But in truth, my Love, if it causes you sorrow, his death will be a cause of sorrow to me also – – nothing, however, can make it a cause of sorrow to Unpublished. 1: B. to Augusta, November 11th 1804 (text from BLJ I 55-7). 2: BLJ XI 117; letter to Murray of February 22nd 1824.

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Pierino! In any case, however, if he died in the manner that they say, it would be the most brilliant moment in his Life. – But why have I run on like this? I do not know – – but I think because of a magic power that does not permit me when write or speak to you to remain within the limits of discretion. Pardon me my Love!]3

If a “transference” (as psychiatrists term it) did occur, this is how Byron wrote it up for the benefit of his mother: The Vizier received me in a large room paved with marble, a fountain {was} playing in the centre, {the apartment was} surrounded by scarlet Ottomans, he received me standing, a wonderful compliment from a Mussulman, & made me sit down on his right hand. – I have a Greek interpreter for general use, but a Physician {of Ali’s} named Seculario who understands Latin acted for me on this occasion. – His first question was why at so early an age I left my country? (the Turks have no idea of travelling for amusement) he then said the English Minister Capt Leake had told him I was of a great family, & desired his respects to my mother, which I now in the name of Ali Pasha present to you. He said he was certain I was a man of birth because I had small ears, curling hair, & little white hands, and expressed himself pleased with my appearance & garb. – He told me to consider him as {a} father whilst I was in Turkey, & said he looked on me as his son. – Indeed he treated me like a child, sending me almonds & sugared sherbet, fruit & sweetmeats 20 times a day. – He begged me to visit him often, and at night when he was more at leisure – I then after coffee & pipes retired for the first time. I saw him thrice afterwards. – It is singular that the Turks who have no hereditary dignities & few great families except the Sultan’s pay so much respect to birth, for I found my pedigree more regarded than even my title. – His Highness is 60 years old, very fat & not tall, but with a fine face, light blue eyes & a white beard, his manner is very kind & at the same time he possesses that dignity which I find universal amongst the Turks. – –4

The compliment about small ears, and so on, gets into Don Juan (I quote from the fair copy, which shows how Byron crafted it):

3: SAHC X p.942. 4: B. to Catherine Gordon Byron, November 12th 1809 (text from Morgan Library, photocopy from microfilm; BLJ I 226-31).

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Note X There is perhaps nothing {more} distinctive of birth / than the hand – it is almost the {only} sign of blood which / Aristocracy can generate. – I remember a Pacha’s / remarking that he knew that a certain Englishman was nobly born / – because “he had small ears – small hands, & curling silky hair. – –5

Was it such obvious flattery which made Byron relate yet another atrocity of Ali’s with the sang-froid we find here? A letter from A. – from you – & from Ali Pacha by Dr. Holland just arrived in which that amiable potentate styles me his “most excellent & dearest friend.” – What do you think was “dearest friend’s” last exploit? – Forty two years ago the inhabitants of a hostile city seized his mother & 2 sisters & treated them as Miss Cunegonde was used by the Bulgarian cavalry. Well – this year he at last becomes master of the a= / =foresaid city – selects all the persons {living} in the remotest degree akin to this outrage (in Turkey these are affronts) their children grand children – cousins &c. to the amount of 600 – & has them put to death in his presence. – I don’t wonder at it – but the interval of 42 years is rather singular. – this Hd tells me occurred in the present spring. – He writes to me to get him a gun made – & assures me of his tender remembrance & profound respect. –6

“In Turkey these are affronts”? What then are they in London, or Nottinghamshire? —————

But there’s more to it. Asked by Mercer Elphinstone for a loan of his famous Albanian costume, Byron replied …. if you like the dress – keep it – I shall be very glad to get rid of it – as it reminds me of one or two things I don’t wish to remember …7

What was he talking about? 5: Don Juan V, st. 106, authorial note (fair copy). 6: B. to Lady Melbourne, September 7th 1813 (text from NLS Ms.43470 f.74; BLJ III 110-12). 7: B. to Mercer Elphinstone, May 3rd 1814; BLJ IV 112-3.

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————— Early in 1809, the English decided that they wanted to retake the Ionian Islands from the French. The problem was that they had already promised them … to Ali Pacha. William Martin Leake, Our Man in Ioannina, had been deputed to guarantee as much: which put Perfidious Albion in a quandary. They knew the inhabitants of the Ionians hated Ali, and assumed that they would welcome an English takeover: What the Sentiments of the inhabitants of the Islands are towards Ali Pacha, – their detestation of the Turkish Government, – and abhorrence of the Pacha personally –, I have before had occasion to state to their Lordships, His view of subduing the Islands is well known, but he can only make himself master of them by the Aid of the English; – and this introduction to putting the Republicans (now merely a name) under the protection of the British, is not improbably the expedient they have adopted to detach us from any Cooperation with the Pacha of Ioannina in his projects against them, – which will at least preserve them, from a fate more dreaded, than their present condition, – but is diametrically opposite to the assurance Captain Leake is directed to give him.8

Into this situation sailed Byron and Hobhouse, the depth of whose innocence may be gauged from a remark made by Hobhouse in his diary, after they’d visited Ali: “we have observed the professed hatred of their masters to be universal amongst the Greeks”.9 On Malta, they were welcomed, courted and cultivated by Spiridion Forresti, who had been English Consul in the Ionians prior to the French taking them, and who was anxous to get his job back. Forresti – evidently a rapid and sophisticated assessor of men – knew that Ali (who, Hobhouse gathered, “… had a scintum perineum from making like Phaedo the most of his youth”)10 would admire Byron very much, and that there would in Tepeleen be more than enough entertainment to keep Byron happy.

8: Admiral Collingwood to Wellesley Pole, 12th June 1809; Public Record Office Admin 1 / 415 No 29. 9: Hobhouse diary, Saturday December 9th 1809 (B.L.Add.Mss. 56527). 10: Ibid., October 2nd 1809. A scintum perineum is a ruptured fundament, leading perhaps to condylomata lata, a symptom of secondary syphilis. Journey (I 114) describes Ali as having “... a disorder which is considered incurable ...”

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Without, it seems, knowing either what he was doing or what was being done to him, Byron wrote to his mother: [I] embark tomorrow for Patras from whence I proceed to Yanina where Ali Pacha holds his court. So I shall soon be among the Mussulmen. – 11

So, off they went. It seems that either Forresti or Leake had sent word ahead to Tepeleen that Byron was George III’s nephew, for when Byron’s friend the Marquis of Sligo visted Tripolitsa the following year, he found that Veli Pacha, son of Ali, took him to be (a) Byron and (b) the royal nephew.12 This Byron alludes to in a letter to his mother: “He [Ali] had heard that an Englishman of rank was in his dominions …”13 Anyway, as Byron and Hobhouse journeyed towards whatever fate Tepaleen might have in store for them, the English invaded the Ionians, taking them all except Corfu. Ali knew a fait accompli when one stared him in the face, and Hobhouse describes his inscrutable reaction: During this interview, Ali congratulated us upon the news which had arrived a fortnight before, of the surrender of Zante, Cefalonia, Ithaca, and Cerigo, to the British Squadron: he said, he was happy to have the English for his neighbours; that he was sure they would not serve him as the Russians and the French had done, in protecting his runaway robbers; that he had always been a friend to our Nation, even during our war with Turkey, and had been instrumental in bringing about the peace.14

In the original manuscript of Childe Harold II, Byron indulges in some double-entendre (my italics: Childe Harold with that chief held colloquy, Yet what they spake, it boots not to repeat, Converse may little charm strange ear, or eye; – Four days he rested in that spacious seat Of Moslem luxury, the choice retreat Of sated Grandeur from the city’s noise, 11: B. to Catherine Gordon Byron, September 15th 1809 (text from Morgan Library, photocopy from microfilm; BLJ I 223-4). 12: Sligo to the Marchioness of Sligo August 3d. 4th. & 6th. 1810, (Beinecke OSB MSS 74 Box 1, Folder 1, sheet 1 side 2). 13: BLJ I 226. 14: Journey (I 112).

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And were it humbler, it in sooth were sweet; But Peace abhorreth artificial joys, And Pleasure, leagued with Pomp, the zest of both destroys. –15

… but such unchaste wordplay is thought inappropriate for virginal, pure students of Byron, and Byron’s original lines are banished from all editions (except mine). Much (though not that much) has been speculated about what happened when they reached Tepaleen, of which Cecil Y. Lang’s muchreprinted Narcissus Jilted: Byron, Don Juan, and the Biographical Imperative.16 I tried to place Lang’s unpolitical thesis into the political context outlined here, in Nature’s Gentler Errors: Byron, Ali Pasha and the Ionian Islands.17 Lang’s thesis is that Don Juan’s sojourn at the court of and in the bed of Catherine the Great is a reference (an invisibly-coded reference) to Byron’s adventures with Ali Pacha (or, as I prefer most fervently to hope) with his hyacinths. But Juan’s time as Catherine’s toyboy is a reward for his valour in battle: Byron’s time as the toy-boy of Ali Pacha was only a tribute to his vulnerability and vanity.

15: CHP II st.64, original: rewritten at Egerton 2027 f.49v. 16: In Historical Studies and Literary Criticism, ed. McGann, Madison 1985, pp 143-79; (rpt. in Alice Levine, sel. and ed., Byron’s Poetry and Prose, Norton 2009). 17: BJ 1995, pp.22-35.

BYRON’S PROBLEM WITH MOTHERS

Bertha: Arnold: Bertha: Arnold: Bertha:

Arnold:

Bertha:

Arnold:

Bertha:

Out, Hunchback! I was born so, Mother! Out, Thou Incubus! Thou Nightmare! Of seven sons The sole abortion! Would that I had been so, And never seen the light! I would so, too! But as thou hast – hence, hence – and do thy best! That back of thine may bear its burthen; ‘tis More high, if not so broad as that of others. It bears its burthen; but, my heart! Will it Sustain that which you lay upon it, Mother? I love, or, at the least, I loved you: nothing Save you, in nature, can love aught like me. You nursed me – do not kill me! Yes – I nursed thee, Because thou wert my first-born, and I knew not If there would be another unlike thee, That monstrous sport of Nature. But get hence, And gather wood! I will: but when I bring it, Speak to me kindly. Though my brothers are So beautiful and lusty, and as free As the free chase they follow, do not spurn me: Our milk has been the same. As is the hedgehog’s, Which sucks at midnight from the wholesome dam Of the young bull, until the milkmaid finds The nipple, next day, sore, and udder dry. Call not thy brothers brethren! Call me not Mother; for if I brought thee forth, it was As foolish hens at times hatch vipers, by Sitting upon strange eggs. Out, urchin, out!

Exit Bertha. (The Deformed Transformed, opening)

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There are echoes, in Arnold’s relationship with his mother, of Gloucester’s with his mother, the Duchess of York, in Richard III: but Arnold – unlike Gloucester – has done nothing to deserve his mother’s vituperation, except having been born. Much closer to home is Byron’s relationship with his own mother. When distance divided Byron and Mrs Byron, his attitude towards her was one of respect and affection: “His [Ali Pasha’s] first question was why at so early an age I left my country? (the Turks have no idea of travelling for amusement) he then said the English Minister Capt Leake had told him I was of a great family, & desired his respects to my mother, which I now in the name of Ali Pasha present to you.”1 She, in turn, was proud of his poetic achievement in so far as she could see it (only English Bards had been published at the time of her death), and responded to his accounts of his adventures with enthusiasm: Dear Byron A thousand thanks for your long letter2 which amused me very much, I see you are quite charmed with the Spanish Ladies, for Heavens sake have nothing to do with them, they make nothing of poisoning both Husbands & Lovers if they are Jealous of them or they offend them, the Italian Ladies do the same mind that my Lord, take care & not get into the Harams of the Turks for there the Men kill the lovers of their Women when they are Jealous, indeed I hear they make nothing of sacrificing both {The} Lady and her lover if they discover them, I will however agree to your marrying a very pretty, very sensible, very nice Sultana, with half a million to her fortune not less, and also a Bushel of Pearls & diamonds no other is worthy of you nor will she be received by me.3

When they were forced to live together, the effect was reversed: The more I see of her the more my dislike augments, nor can I so entirely conquer the appearance of it, as to prevent her from perceiving my opinion, this so far from calming the Unpublished. 1: B. to Catherine Gordon Byron, November 12th 1809 (text from Morgan Library, photocopy from microfilm; BLJ I 226-31). 2: BLJ I 218-22 (Aug 11-15 1809). 3: Mrs Byron to B., October 4th 1809 Deposit Lovelace Bodleian 154, 128-8: quoted by permission of Pollinger Ltd and the Earl of Lytton. See Thirteen Letters from Byron’s Mother, 2006 NABSR, pp.34-67.

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Byron’s Problem with Mothers Gale, blows it into a hurricane, which threatens to destroy every thing, till exhausted by its own violence, it is lulled into a sullen torpor, which after a short period, is again roused into fresh and renewed phrenzy, to me most terrible, and to every other Spectator astonishing. She then declares that she plainly perceives I hate her, that I am leagued with her bitterest enemies, viz. Yourself, Ld. C[arlisl]e and Mr. H[anson] and as I never Dissemble or contradict her we are all honoured with a multiplicity of epithets, too numerous, and some of them too gross, to be repeated. In this society, and in this amusing and instructive manner, have I dragged out a weary fortnight, and am condemned to pass another or three weeks as happily as the former. No Captive Negro, or Prisoner of War, ever looked forward to their emancipation, and return to Liberty, with more Joy, and more lingering expectation, than I do to my escape from [this] maternal bondage …4

Semi-conscious guilt at the way his monstrous extravagance caused the stress which finally killed her may have motivated his inability to attend her funeral. Whatever the case, he never achieved closure, and mothers, in so far as they figure in his verse, are presented with deep ambivalence. The trope of a son so near death as to be unrecognised by his own mother occurs four times in Byron’s work, as though he found the idea attractive. See The Siege of Corinth, ll.1003-4: “Not the matrons that them bore / Could discern their offspring more”. See Don Juan II 102 1-4: “ Famine, Despair, Cold, Thirst and Heat, had done / Their work on them by turns, and thinned them to / Such things a Mother had not known her Son / Amidst the Skeletons of that gaunt Crew”; The Vision of Judgement, ll. 620-2: “I don’t think his own mother / (If that he had a mother) would her son / Have known …”; and The Island, 181-2: “The sapping famine, rendering scarce a son / Known to his mother in the skeleton …” The Vision of Judgement quotation is the most important in that it queries the very existence of the mother: Junius – one of Byron’s noms de plume or de voyage in the poem – disappears in a puff of celestial smoke, so that it would be highly apt if he were discovered to have arrived in one, rather than via “this downright way of creation”. In a passage at the translation of which Byron may have assisted, and for the publication of which he certainly paid, the mother is kept quiet, even though she’s giving birth to twins:

4: B. to Augusta Byron, August 18th 1805 (text from BLJ I 5-6).

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(The authors of the Persian religion) say, that before the creation of heaven and earth and their creatures Zervanus existed, which being interpreted signifies fortune, or glory. He sacrificed a thousand years that a son might be born to him (named Hormistus) who should create heaven and earth and whatever in them is. And after this sacrifice of a thousand years, he began thus to meditate: Will this sacrifice profit me? and produce my son Hormistus, or do I labour in vain? And, during this meditation, Hormistus and Harminus were conceived in the womb of their mother; Hormistus by sacrifice, but Harminus by doubt. Zervanus being assured of the fact, said: There are twins in the womb, to the elder shall the sovereignty be given. But Hormistus having divined his father’s determination, betrayed it to Harminus, saying: Our father Zeruanus [sic] is disposed to give the sovereignty to the elder of us two. But Harminus hearing these words, came forth immediately, and presented himself to his father. Having seen him Zeruanus knew not who he was, and said: Who art thou? he replied: I am thy son. But Zeruanus said: My son is bright and of a grateful odour, but thou dark and offensive. But while they thus discoursed, Hormistus was born at this time, shining and sweet, and presented himself to Zeruanus. And Zeruanus knew him to be Hormistus his son for whom he had sacrificed. And he gave the instruments with which he had sacrificed into the hands of Hormistus saying: With these I sacrificed for thee, henceforward do thou the same for me.5

“… do I labour in vain?” asks the father, not the mother, who, apart from possessing the womb in and around which all these cosmic events occur, is consulted at no stage of the procedure. Byron’s admiration for Daniel Boone is well-known: He was not all alone; around him grew A Sylvan tribe of Children of the chace, 5: Aucher, A Grammar, Armenian and English, Venice 1819 pp. 199-203: for a detailed discussion, see Cochran, Byron and the Birth of Arimanes, K.-S.R. 1991, pp.49-59.

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Whose young, unwakened World was ever new; Nor Sword, nor Sorrow yet had left a trace On her unwrinkled brow, nor could you view A frown on Nature’s, or on human face; The free-born Forest found and kept them free, And fresh as is a torrent or a tree. (Don Juan VIII st.65)

Evidently Mrs Boone had no part to play in this idyll: Boone and his Sylvan tribe had dispensed with the need for women. “… her unwrinkled brow” belongs to the “young, unawakened World” – not to her. This idea – of the American wilderness as an area in which copulation and gestation are controlled and discouraged – is further developed in Don Juan XV:



When Rapp the Harmonist embargoed marriage In his harmonious Settlement (which flourishes Strangely enough, as yet, without miscarriage – Because it breeds no more mouths than it nourishes, ‹–Š‘—––Š‘•‡•ƒ†‡š’‡…‡•™Š‹…Š†‹•’ƒ”ƒ‰‡ What Nature naturally most encourages) * Why called he “Harmony” a State sans Wedlock? – Now here I’ve got the Preacher at a dead lock. – * This extraordinary and flourishing German colony in America does not entirely exclude marriage – as “the Shakers” do – but lays such restrictions upon it as prevent more than a certain quantum of births within a certain number of years, which births (as Mr. Hulme observes) generally arrive “in a little flock, like those of a farmer’s lambs – all within the same month perhaps”. These Harmonists (so called from the name of their settlement) are represented as a remarkably flourishing, pious, and quiet people. – – See the various recent writers on America. – – (Don Juan XV st.35 and authorial note)

So much for Byron’s own mother, and mothers in the abstract. When we come to the mothers of his children, the picture darkens – for he hated them. Perhaps this was because, in making him a father, they’d provided irrefutable proof that he was himself an adult (“I know not how, it was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy”).6 Perhaps what he wrote to Augusta was closer to the truth than his jocular tone would concede (“I don’t know what Scrope Davies meant by telling you I liked Children, I abominate the sight of them so much that I 6: Detached Thought 72.

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have always had the greatest respect for the character of Herod”).7 Whatever the case, any woman who bore Byron a child had disagreeable consequences to face. The poem he wrote On Hearing that Lady Byron was Ill contains this: Thy nights are banish’d from the realms of sleep! – Yet they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel A hollow agony which will not heal, For thou art pillow’d on a curse too deep; Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap The bitter harvest in a woe as real! I have had many foes, but none like thee; For ‘gainst the rest myself I could defend, And be avenged, or turn them into friend; But thou in safe implacability Hadst nought to dread – in thine own weakness shielded, And in my love, which has but too much yielded, And spared, for thy sake, some I should not spare – And thus upon the World’s trust in thy truth – And the wild fame of my ungovern’d youth – On things that were not, and on things that are – Even upon such a basis hast thou built A monument, whose cement hath been guilt! The moral Clytemnestra of thy lord, And hew’d down, with an unsuspected sword, Fame, peace, and hope – and all the better life Which, but for this cold treason of thy heart, Might still have risen from out the grave of strife, And found a nobler duty than to part. (Lines On Hearing that Lady Byron was Ill ll.19-42)

It gets worse. Clytemnestra, we protest, had grounds for murdering her husband – some legitimate (the sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia, and his lover Cassandra, whom he brought home) – some less respectable but still comprehensible (her lover Aegisthus). Annabella’s fault had been, in the face of Byron’s non-stop vituperation, to maintain a dignified silence. Byron, who knew the classics well, had at least the decency not to publish the verses. He got further “revenge” by depicting her – even as he denied doing so – as Don Juan’s two-faced mother Donna Inez, in Canto I. Inez (who has no scenes with her son) is responsible for the blinkered education which 7: B. to Augusta Leigh, August 30th 1811 (a) (text from BLJ II 84-5).

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gives him no defence against the promptings of desire and thus starts him on his road to exile. Inez is incapable of self-correction. Our last view of her for some time is a schoolteacher: In the mean time, to pass her hours away, Brave Inez now set up a Sunday School For naughty children, who would rather play (Like truant rogues) the devil, or the fool; Infants of three years old were taught that day; Dunces were whipt or set upon a Stool; Their manners mending and their morals curing She taught them to suppress their vice and urine. – (Don Juan II st.10, first version)

The couplet was changed, on Hobhouse’s protests in proof, to The great Success of Juan’s Education, Spurred her to try {or / teach} another Generation.

Inez’s maternal advice, when he reaches the nadir of his adventures in St Petersburg as toyboy to Catherine the Great, is this: She also recommended him to God, “And no less to God’s Son, as well as Mother, “Warned him against Greek Worship, which looks odd “In Catholic eyes – but told him, too, to smother “Outward dislike, which don’t look well abroad; “Informed him that he had a little brother, “Born in a second wedlock; and above “All, praised the Empress’s maternal love. “She could not too much give her approbation “Unto an Empress who preferred young Men, “Whose Age – and what was better still, whose nation, “And Climate – stopped all Scandal now and then, “At home it might have given her some vexation “But where Thermometers sunk down to ten – “Or five – or one – or zero – She could never Believe that Virtue thawed before the River. (Don Juan X sts.32-3)

Annabella at least had custody of their child. Claire Claremont didn’t. The following is from the draft of a letter she sent him, begging a visit:

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I beg from you the indulgence of a visit from my child because that I am weaker every day & more miserable; I have already proved in ten thousand ways that I have so loved her as to have commanded nay to have destroyed such of my feelings as would have been injurious to her welfare. You answer my request by menacing if I do not continue to suffer in silence, that you will inflict the greatest of all evils on my child. You threaten to put her in a convent deprive her thus of all domestic affections, 8

If Byron ever answered Claire’s letters, the evidence hasn’t survived. Instead, he reported her pleas to R.B.Hoppner, though in these terms: Clare writes me the most insolent letters about Allegra – see what a man gets by taking care of natural children! – Were it not for the poor little child’s sake – I am almost tempted to send her back to her atheistical mother – but that would be too bad; – you cannot conceive the excess of her insolence and I know not why – for I have been at great care and expence – taking a house in the country on purpose for her – she has two maids & every possible attention. – If Clare thinks that she shall ever interfere with the child’s morals or education – she mistakes – she never shall – The girl shall be a Christian and a married woman – if possible. – As to seeing her – she may see her – under proper restrictions – but She is not to throw every thing into confusion with her Bedlam behaviour. – To express it delicately – I think Madame Clare is a damned bitch – what think you?9

The idea that it’s perfectly natural for a mother to want to see her daughter would interfere with Byron’s hatred. Neither Ceres searching for Proserpina, nor Hermione longing for Perdita, would get any sympathy from him. 8: Claire Claremont to B., May 4th 1820 (draft) (not found at NLS Acc.12604 / 4177B; Stocking I 146-7). 9: B. to Hoppner, September 10th 1820 (text from NLS Ms.43448; BLJ VII 1745).

“ASSYRIAN TALES”: BYRON, HOMOSEXUALITY AND INCEST

Byron could not maintain relationships which did not involve transgression (or “sin”, as it used to be called): he was only happy in those involving adultery, homosexuality, or incest. Most of his women were married: Lady Oxford, Caroline Lamb, Marianna Segati, Margherita Cogni, Teresa Guiccioli … could it be that he rejected the advances of Doña Josefa Beltran (“Adio tu hermoso! me gusto mucho”) because she was not married? But there is and was nothing surprising about adultery. Incest has always been taboo; in Byron’s day – ruled as the country was by old public-school men1 – homosexuality was nameless. Caroline Cameron pleased him by dragging up and pretending to be his brother. Of all Byron’s loving pairs, only Juan and Haidee, and Torquil and Neuha, are straightforward. Torquil being Celtic, and Neuha Polynesian, they are outside the Judaeo-Christian tradition: but it’s Juan and Haidee, the most innocent, whose damnability Byron is at pains to stress … Alas! for Juan and Haidee! they were So loving and so lovely – till then never, Excepting our first parents, such a pair Had run the risk of being damned forever; And Haidee, being devout as well fair, Had, doubtless, heard about the Stygian river – And Hell and Purgatory – but forgot Just in the very Crisis She should not. – (Don Juan II st.193)

… which seems unbalanced.

Unpublished. 1: As it still is (we’re told by Baroness Warsi and others) in 2014.

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Homosexuality In Romantic Cruxes, Thomas McFarland identifies the following as “essential determinants of the romantic sensibility”: “external nature, imagination, egotism, love of the particular, flight into the medieval, flight into the Orient, flight into drugs, a preoccupation with dreams, with melancholy, solitude, suicide, an ubiquitous awareness of process and current, a longing for the infinite and unattainable, an omnipresent involvement with the organic, a profound commitment to symbol, incompleteness, fragmentation, ruin”, “madness” and “wanderlust”.2 All of these themes, except “flight into drugs” and “an omnipresent involvement with the organic”, are to be found in Childe Harold and Byron’s six misnamed “Turkish Tales” (and an awful lot of them are to be found in King Lear: but then, who’s more “romantic” than Shakespeare?). But McFarland doesn’t mention one vital “romantic” theme – incest (which we know to be important from our reading of Mario Praz): and leaves out another which isn’t normally mentioned in connection with “romanticism” at all – homosexuality, or bisexuality. Byron subsequently found his “romantic” poems embarrassing, for reasons I shall analyse; and contrived a number of stratagems to distance himself from them. His attitude to homosexuality – his own and others – depended on to whom he was writing. To Hobhouse (and Matthews) he’s boastful, albeit, of necessity, coded: Tell M. that I have obtained above two hundred pl&optC’s3 and am almost tired of them, for the history of these he must wait my return, as after many attempts I have given up the idea of conveying information on paper. – You know the monastery of Mendele, it was there I made myself master of the first.4

Whereas to Leigh Hunt, five years later, he’s the very soul of discretion: … an addiction to poetry is very generally the result of “an uneasy mind in an uneasy body” disease or deformity have been the attendants of many of our best – Collins mad – Chatterton I think – mad – Cowper mad – Pope {crooked} – 2: Thomas McFarland, Romantic Cruxes (Clarendon 1987), pp.13-23. 3: From Petronius’ Satyricon: “coitum plenum et optabilem”. 4: B. to Hobhouse, from October 4th 1810: text from NLS Ms.43438 f.18; BLJ II 21-3.

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Milton {blind} – Gray – (I have heard the last was afflicted by an incurable & very grievous distemper – though not generally known)5

I don’t know where he got the information about Gray from at this date. He received confirmation from one of Gray’s lovers, Karl Victor von Bonstetten, in Geneva in 1816.6 But “an incurable & very grievous distemper” is very chaste and ethical in contrast to “above two hundred pl&optC’s”. These last were obtained with his young friend Niccolò Giraud, whose company he preferred to his Greek love Eustathios Georgiu; prior to them there’d been the profound attachment to John Edleston, the Trinity choirboy, and prior to Edleston several crushes at Harrow, principle among them being his love for the Earl of Clare, which lasted off and on until adulthood, and his fondness for William Harness, the future Shakespeare scholar. At the very end of his life his unreciprocated love for Loukas Chalandritsanos caused him great suffering. ————— When The Giaour is published, Byron is in Maidenhead. On the day The Corsair is published, February 1st 1814, he again makes sure he’s out of town, at Newstead, with Augusta. On the day Lara is published, August 6th 1814, he’s again out of town, at Hastings, with Augusta. On April 29th 1814 he demands that John Murray destroy all unsold copies of The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. Murray is naturally unwilling to do so, and on May 1st Byron, saying “If … it really would be inconvenient”, cancels the request. He’d given the copyright of Childe Harold I and II to R.C.Dallas, who’d prepared the poem for the printer, and then gave the copyright of The Corsair to Dallas, too – much to Murray’s horror, since it gave Dallas the liberty to sell The Corsair to someone else: Byron had more or less to instruct Dallas that although he owned the poem, it was on condition that only Murray could publish it. Dallas is responsible for punctuating the printer’s copies of Childe Harold and The Corsair; Francis Hodgson for those of The Giaour and The Bride; so that the versions which finally come before the public are 5: B. to Leigh Hunt, November 4th-6th 1815: text from V&A Forster, 48.G.22 ff. 17/1-2; BLJ IV 332. 6: Hobhouse’s diary, Thursday September 12th 1816: “Bonstetten has had the fortune, and the misfortune, to be the friend of Gray and Müller – one suspected, and the other convicted, of a false taste – but is here acquitted participation …”

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not really the work of Byron, who claimed he didn’t know where to put a comma. The printer’s copy of Parisina is prepared by Annabella. Byron stalled for so long over the question of accepting payment for The Giaour and The Bride that Murray – embarrassed, as a professional, at the idea of receiving the works as gifts – paid him a thousand guineas whether he wanted the money or not. These strange conflicts – between the poet and the publisher, and between the poet’s urge to write and his unwillingness to see his poems as commodities in the market-place – his partial pretence that he hadn’t, in fact, written them – continue until he leaves England, when his attitude changes completely, and, with or without Douglas Kinnaird as intermediary, he demands and receives larger and larger payments from Murray, starting with the 2,100 guineas Kinnaird gets for Childe Harold III and The Prisoner of Chillon, and climaxing in the 2,500 guineas he demands and gets for Childe Harold IV (he throws in Beppo for nothing). It’s standard to argue that an aristocratic disdain for selling one’s wares, and making money from mere scribbling, is at the root of Byron’s horror at the idea of taking John Murray’s money for his “romantic” poems. I want to argue that there’s more to it, and that the poems are confessional, and made Byron afraid of his own temerity in them at giving common currency to his bisexuality – he was amazed when no-one read them in that light – and as a result conceived a contempt for public, critical and especially female opinion, which finds its expression in Beppo and Don Juan. He thought his confessions were clear enough: that no-one saw what he’d done only proved that his “fans” (“Constantia”, “Echo”, “La Suissesse”, and so on), simply hadn’t been able to read them. Byron was so insecure about Childe Harold I and II that it was only with unwillingness that he confessed to having written it at all. Dallas writes, In not disparaging this poem [Hints from Horace], however, next day, I could not refrain from expressing some surprise that he had written nothing else: upon which he told me that he had occasionally written short poems, besides a great many stanzas in Spenser’s measure, relative to the countries he had visited. “They are not worth troubling you with, but you shall have them all with you if you like.” So came I by Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. He took it from a small trunk, with a number of verses. He said they had been read but by one person, who had found very little to commend, and much to condemn: that he himself was of that opinion, and he was sure I should be so too. Such as it was, however, it was at my service; but he was urgent that “The Hints from Horace”

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“Assyrian Tales”: Byron, Homosexuality and Incest should be immediately put in train, which I promised to have done. How much he was mistaken as to my opinion, the following letter shows. He was going next morning to Harrow for a few days, but I was so delighted with his poem that I could not refrain from writing to him that very evening, the 16th of July. “You have written one of the most delightful poems I ever read. If I wrote this in flattery, I should deserve your contempt rather than your friendship. Remember, I depend upon your considering me superior to it. I have been so fascinated with Childe Harold, that I have not been able to lay it down. I would almost pledge my life on its advancing the reputation of your poetical powers, and of its gaining you great honour and regard, if you will do me the credit and favour of attending to my suggestions respecting some alterations and omissions which I think indispensable. Not a line do I mean to offer. I already know your sentiment on that point—all shall be your own; but in having the magnanimity to sacrifice some favourite stanzas, you will perhaps have a little trouble, though indeed but a little, in connecting the parts. I shall instantly put the poem into my nephew’s hands to copy it precisely; and I hope, on Friday or Saturday morning, to take my breakfast with you, as I did this morning. It is long since I spent two hours so agreeably—not only your kind expressions as to myself, but the marked temperance of your mind, gave me extreme pleasure.” Attentive as he had hitherto been to my opinions and suggestions, and natural as it was that he should be swayed by such decided praise, I was surprised to find that I could not at first obtain credit with Lord Byron for my judgment on Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. “It was any thing but poetry—it had been condemned by a good critic—had I not myself seen the sentences on the margins of the manuscript?” He dwelt upon the paraphrase of the Art of Poetry with pleasure; and the manuscript of that was given to Cawthorn, the publisher of the Satire, to be brought forth without delay. I did not, however, leave him so: before I quitted him I returned to the charge, and told him that I was so convinced of the merit of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, that as he had given it to me, I should certainly publish it, if he would have the kindness to attend to some corrections and alterations. He at length seemed impressed by my my perseverance, and took the poem into consideration. He was at first unwilling to alter or omit any of the stanzas, but they could not be published as they stood. Besides several weak and ludicrous passages, unworthy of the poem, there were some of an offensive nature, which, on

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reflection, his own feelings convinced him could not with propriety be allowed to go into the world. These he undertook to curtail and soften; but he persisted in preserving his philosophical, free-thinking stanzas, relative to death. I had much friendly, but unsuccessful contest with him on that point, and I was obliged to be satisfied with the hypothetical but most beautiful stanza— Yet if, as holiest men have deem’d, there be A land of souls beyond that sable shore, &c. which, in the course of our contention, he sent me, to be inserted after the sceptical stanzas in the beginning of the Second Canto. He also sacrificed to me some harsh political reflections on the Government, and a ludicrous stanza or two which I thought injured the poem. I did all I could to raise his opinion of this composition, and I succeeded; but he varied much in his feelings about it, nor was he, as will appear, at his ease, until the world decided on its merit. He said again and again, that I was going to get him into a scrape with his old enemies, and that none of them would rejoice more than the Edinburgh Reviewers at an opportunity to humble him. He said I must not put his name to it. I entreated him to leave it to me, and that I would answer for this poem silencing all his enemies.7

The “passages, unworthy of the poem ... some of an offensive nature” are of a homoerotic kind, and support Tom Mole’s theory that Childe Harold was intended at first as a private poem, written for a coterie of Cambridge gays headed by C.S.Matthews, but that, Matthews being dead, “once the audience Byron hoped to titillate with these references could no longer read them, they no longer served their purpose”,8 and the poem had to be edited for a larger market, one with more chaste sensibilities. Thus the stanza on William Beckford had to go: Wrath’s vials on thy lofty head have burst, In wit – in genius – as in wealth the first, How wondrous bright thy blooming Morn arose; But thou wert smitten with unhallowed thirst Of nameless crime, and thy sad day must close 7: R.C.Dallas, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron from the Year 1808 to the end of 1814 (1824), pp.113-118. 8: Tom Mole, Byron’s Romantic Celebrity: Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutic of Intimacy (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), p.51.

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Thus the original text of the Suliote song had to be amended: I ask not the pleasures that riches supply, My Sabre shall win what the feeble must buy; Shall win the young minions with long-flowing hair, And many a maid from her mother shall tear. – I love the fair face of the maid, and the youth, Their caresses shall lull us, their voices shall soothe; Let them bring from their chambers their many-toned lyres, And sing us a song on the fall of their Sires.10

And thus the “indecent” word-play in the description of Ali Pacha had to be rewritten, so that the original idea, whereby Harold’s visit to Tepellene becomes a trip to a homosexual Hades, is lost: Here woman’s voice is never heard – apart, And scarce permitted guarded, veiled to rove, She yields to one her person & her heart, Tamed to her cage, nor feels a wish to move; For boyish minions of unhallowed love The shameless torch of wild desire is lit, Caressed, preferred even woman’s self above, Whose forms for Nature’s gentler errors fit All frailties mote excuse save that which they commit.11

If these seem satirical at the expense of oriental sodomites, we have to remember that the penalties in England for “antiphysical concubinage” (the phrase is from Don Leon),12 necessitated all references to it be couched in terms of apparently grave disapprobation. A passage from Matthews to Byron early in 1811 shows how wretched the life of a closet gay was in England:

9: Text edited from Erdman, David with the assistance of Worrall, David (eds). Lord Byron, vol VI. Childe Harold’s pilgrimage a critical, composite edition, in Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics, (1991), p.37. B. pencils, “I would not have this about Beckford.” 10: B.L. Egerton 2027 f.51v. 11: B.L. Egerton 2027 f.49r. 12: See Cochran (ed.), Byron and Women [and men] (CSP 2010), p.49.

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I took root at this place [Cambridge], & have continued here ever since the election (with the exception of a fortnight or so in London) not unpleasantly. Feasting, in which I am sorry to say I have frequently exceeded, Card playing in which I am generally successful, Reading for which I have lately taken a turn, and hunting of which I am passionately fond, being my chief occupations. But no quoits,13 the lack of wch. I feel acutely. however, ye sports I have mentioned, the tranquillity of academic bowers, & the congeniality of old scenes eke me out a tolerable existence. Quant à ma methode, my botanical studies have been sadly at a stand. I have however added a specimen or two to my anthology, but I have contemplated them only at a distance. So you see I am still as ignorant14 as when you left me.15

Tom Mole argues that the different openings Byron wrote for Childe Harold show his move from creating a private, coded poem, with in-jokes for a male audience led by Matthews, to redesigning it as a public, “romantic” poem, largely for women, for whom the in-jokes would have fallen flat. In Childe Harold, women are rejected, both in the original, and in the more market-worthy stanzas added later. Harold, in one of these later stanzas, claims to be too old for Ianthe (Lady Charlotte Harley): Young Peri of the West! – ’tis well for me My years already doubly number thine; My loveless eye unmoved may gaze on thee, And safely view thy ripening beauties shine … (To Ianthe, ll.19-22)

He’s strangely cold to Inez (Doña Josefa Beltram): And dost thou ask what secret woe I bear, corroding joy and youth? And wilt thou vainly seek to know A pang, ev’n thou must fail to soothe? It is not love, it is not hate, Nor low Ambition’s honours lost, 13: “coits” or coitus. 14: It’s possible that Matthews died a virgin. 15: Charles Skinner Matthews to B., January 13th 1811: (text from NLS 12604 / 4247G).

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The “secret woe” he bears, “corroding joy and youth”, is his preference for boys. His indifference baffles Florence (Constance Spencer Smith): Fair Florence found, in sooth with some amaze, One who, ‘twas said, still sighed to all he saw, Withstand, unmoved, the lustre of her gaze, Which others hailed with real or mimic awe, Their hope, their doom, their punishment, their law; All that gay Beauty from her bondsmen claims: And much she marvelled that a youth so raw Nor felt, nor feigned at least, the oft-told flames, Which, though sometimes they frown, yet rarely anger dames. Little knew she that seeming marble heart, Now masked in silence or withheld by pride, Was not unskilful in the spoiler’s art, And spread its snares licentious far and wide; Nor from the base pursuit had turned aside, As long as aught was worthy to pursue: But Harold on such arts no more relied; And had he doated on those eyes so blue, Yet never would he join the lover’s whining crew. (CHP II sts. 32-3)

Instead of all these females, Harold (whose “snares licentious” are “masked in silence”) is (or was in the original poem) drawn, by forces undefined, to a descent into Hades, terminating at Ali Pacha’s palace at Tepellene, “… boyish minions of unhallowed love”, and “The shameless torch of wild desire”. It is often forgotten that Byron had expressed himself thus, to Henry Drury, just prior to embarkation: I have laid down my pen, but have promised to contribute a chapter on the state of morals, and a further treatise on the

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same to be entituled “Sodomy simplified or Pæderasty proved to be praiseworthy from ancient authors and modern practice. – – Hobhouse further hopes to indemnify himself in Turkey for a life of exemplary chastity at home by letting out his “fair bodye” to the whole Divan. –16

“Byron is being facetious” writes Louis Crompton.17 He is, but isn’t. By Hobhouse’s “exemplary chastity at home” he does not refer to women. Meeting recently with an editor of twentieth-century poetry, I found her lamenting the fact that none of her author’s manuscripts had survived, and amazed her by saying that, even though most of Byron’s manuscripts have survived, not only were his habitual accidentals ignored by all editors (except me), but that in the case of Childe Harold I and II, even his original substantive readings were either confined to footnotes (in the case of Jerome McGann) or ignored completely (in the case of Alice Levine). Even commentators on the literary flowerings of Byron’s bisexuality (Louis B. Crompton being an exception) ignore the obvious homoerotic statements in the Childe Harold manuscripts. See the very strange Byron’s Gay Narrator in Don Juan,18 and the downright peculiar Byron and the Choreography of Queer Desire.19 Byronists are as nervous as the Church of England in the way they avert their gazes from Byron’s bisexuality. His ability to love men – to identify even with men whom he thinks of as his enemies – is shown in the Turkish Tales. Why did he hate Robert Southey, if not because, in Southey, he saw a cheap, opportunist, turncoat caricature of himself, close enough to the real thing to give him the creeps? Male relationships were of the utmost importance to Byron, and, whether you use the terms “homosexuality”, “queer desire”, “male bonding”, or “homosociality”, they are all over the Turkish Tales. The poems are full of heroes who, in destroying or in being destroyed by other men, empathise with them as much as if not more than they do with the heroines. This theme slowly disappears as we near the end of the sequence. Byron suffered from “an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions, at the same time without losing the past”,20 and this applied more to his male companions and colleagues than to most of the women in 16: B. to Henry Drury, from Falmouth, June 25th 1809 (BLJ I 208). 17: Louis B. Crompton, Byron and Greek Love, p.127. 18: By Jonathan David Gross in ERR 9:3 (summer 1998) pp.323-50. 19: By Steven Bruhm in Stabler, Jane (ed.) Byron Studies, Palgrave 2007, pp.1633. 20: Authorial note to DJ XVI 97.

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his life. He seems to have introjected their viewpoints into his own picture of things, with radically differing results: thus Childe Harold III, written in Shelley’s idealistic company, is quite different from Childe Harold I, II, and IV, written with the stunted and misanthropic Hobhouse about. Thus he was horrified to find that his Augustan idol William Gifford was, as Murray’s reader, going to look at Childe Harold I and II;21 for seeing it vicariously through the eyes of an eighteenth-century satirist such as Gifford activated the eighteenth-century satirist in Byron, and from such a perspective it wouldn’t look good (though in fact Gifford loved it). Byron has a way of becoming other people (often quite different people, with confusing results), and not just in his art. See his unease at being unable to decide which, of Hobhouse or Gifford, he is to sympathise with over Hobhouse’s Letters from Paris. He sees both perspectives, but can’t reconcile them. There’s even a letter in which he articulates Teresa’s (unsympathetic) view of his marriage break-up: though he expresses it to Augusta, not to Annabella.22 ————— At the start of 1812, Byron was devastated to discover that his male favourite, Robert Rushton, had been to bed with his female favourite, Susan Vaughan. “Two loves” [had he], “of comfort and despair”. It caused him to reassess himself, and the result was misery. The extent of his sense of being an alien may be gauged by what he wrote to Hodgson: “I can’t blame the girl, but my own vanity in believing that ‘such a thing as I am’ could be loved”.23 For Susan he wore a mask of forbearance: I will not deny that I have been attached to you, & I am now heartily ashamed of my weakness. – You may also enjoy the satisfaction of having deceived me most completely, & rendered me for the present sufficiently wretched. – From the first I told you that the continuance of our connection depended on your own conduct. – – All is over. – I have little to condemn on my own part, but credulity; you threw yourself in my way, I received you, loved you, till you have become worthless, & now I part from you with some regret, & without resentment. – I wish you well, do not forget that your own misconduct has

21: BLJ II 78-9. 22: B. to Augusta Leigh, October 5th 1821: (BLJ VIII 233-5). 23: B. to Francis Hodgson, January 28th 1812: (BLJ II 159).

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bereaved you of a friend, of whom nothing else could have deprived you. – Do not attempt explanation, it is useless …24

To Rushton he was paternal: If any thing has passed between you before or since my last visit to Newstead, do not be afraid to mention it. I am sure you would not deceive me, though she would. Whatever it is, you shall be forgiven. I have not been without some suspicions on the subject, and am certain that, at your time of life, the blame could not attach to you.25

In fact they’d both deceived him, but it suited his mindset to fix the blame upon Susan only. So she was dismissed, and Rushton kept on. This jealousy is, in The Giaour, transmuted into the protagonist’s selfloathing, isolation and despair at having lost Leila, the woman he loved, and having as a result to have killed Hassan, the man he loved: Much in his visions mutters he Of maiden ‘whelmed beneath the sea; Of sabres clashing – foemen flying, Wrongs avenged – and Moslem dying. On cliff he hath been known to stand, And rave as to some bloody hand Fresh severed from its parent limb, Invisible to all but him, Which beckons onward to his grave, And lures to leap into the wave.” (ll.822-31)

His grief and guilt at having terminated his own life in killing Hassan for having killed Leila, is the only satisfactory answer to the question, “Why does he have to go into a monastery, he who hates its music and loathes its religion?” It answers T.S.Eliot’s point, “Why a Greek of that period should have been so oppressed with remorse (although wholly impenitent) for killing a Moslem in what he would have considered a fair fight,” [is a question] “that we cannot answer”.26 Byron cunningly dissipates the tale’s emotional focus by putting grief at Hassan’s death into two passages done from a Moslem viewpoint, the one about Hassan’s 24: B. to Susan Vaughan, from 8 St James’s Street London, January 28th 1812 (BLJ II 159). 25: B. to Robert Rushton, from 8 St James’s Street, January 25th 1812: (BLJ II 158). 26: T.S.Eliot, Byron.

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deserted palace (“The steed is vanished from the stall”, and so on), and the scene in which his mother is told of his death (“The browsing camels’ bells are tinkling …”): however, the Giaour feels, not just responsibility, but guilt, for both deaths. Whether or not under the influence of the curse put on him (“But thou, false infidel, shalt writhe / Beneath avenging Monkir’s scythe …”), he’s identifying with the man he killed – his own severed hand – and is experiencing Hassan’s alienation, bitterness and betrayal, in himself. He, the cuckold-maker, empathises with the cuckold whom he killed (we shall see something like this again in Parisina): She died – I dare not tell thee how; But look – ‘tis written on my brow! There read of Cain the curse and crime, In characters unworn by Time – Still, ere thou dost condemn me – pause – Not mine the act, though I the cause. Yet did he but what I had done Had she been false to more than one. Faithless to him – he gave the blow; But true to me – I laid him low; Howe’er deserved her doom might be, Her treachery was truth to me; To me she gave her heart, that all Which Tyranny can ne’er enthrall; And I, alas! too late to save, Yet all I then could give – I gave – ‘Twas some relief – our foe a grave. (ll.1056-72)

This section, preceding the death of Hassan, makes a strong enough statement about male bonding: Ah! fondly youthful hearts can press, To seize and share the dear caress; But Love itself could never pant For all that Beauty sighs to grant With half the fervour Hate bestows Upon the last embrace of foes, When grappling in the fight they fold Those arms that ne’er shall lose their hold – Friends meet to part; Love laughs at faith – True foes, once met, are joined till death! (ll.645-54)

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It’s just like Shakespeare’s erotico / martial antagonists, Coriolanus and Tullus Aufidius. For The Bride of Abydos, see second section below. In The Corsair, Conrad’s coolness towards Medora, and his strange indifference to Gulnare in the dungeon, can best be explained by his preference for the company of the young sailor Gonsalvo: His eyes of pride to young Gonsalvo turn; Why doth he start, and inly seem to mourn? Alas! those eyes beheld his rocky tower, And live a moment o’er the parting hour; She – his Medora – did she mark the prow? Ah! never loved he half so much as now! (ll.77-82)

His love is most intense when he’s sailing away from Medora, with young Gonsalvo for company. Part of the complete unbelievability of the scene between Conrad and Gulnare in the dungeon lies in the way that Conrad – like the Giaour, but with far less credibility – identifies with the viewpoint of his enemy, Seyd, who’s about to have him impaled! “Lady! I look to none; my lips proclaim What last proclaimed they – Conrad still the same; Why shouldst thou seek an outlaw’s life to spare, And change the sentence I deserve to bear? Well have I earned – nor here alone – the meed Of Seyd’s revenge, by many a lawless deed.” (ll.1449-54)

We’ve heard about gentleman-pirates, but this is ridiculous. His continued refusal to be rescued reads like denial; and, as I’ve argued,27 Byron is suppressing the vital element in his source (Sotheby’s translation of Wieland’s Oberon) in which the Gulnare-equivalent, Alamansaris (a villainess), makes making love to her the price the hero, Huon, must pay for his liberation.28 Byron gives Conrad the reaction, but deprives him of the motive, making him look a very unconvincing pirate indeed: an even bigger wimp than Selim. His horrified reaction upon realising that Gulnare has killed Seyd is farcical, and shows such horror at

27: See the Corsair chapter. 28: This illogic is ironed-out in L’Uscoque, George Sand’s version of the Conrad/Lara narrative.

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his enemy’s death, that it’s almost as intense as the Giaour’s regret over killing Hassan: He had seen battle – he had brooded lone O’er promised pangs to sentenced guilt foreshown – He had been tempted – chastened – and the chain Yet on his arms might ever there remain – But ne’er from strife, captivity, remorse – From all his feelings in their inmost force – So thrilled, so shuddered every creeping vein As now they froze before that purple stain. That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak, Had banished all the beauty from her cheek! Blood he had viewed – could view unmoved – but then It flowed in combat, or was shed by men! (ll.1585-96)

What frightens him (supposedly guilty of “a thousand crimes”) is that the heroine may really be a hero. The fact that he’s been rescued from impalement by a woman, at the price of his worst enemy’s death, unmans him: And Conrad following, at her beck, obeyed, Nor cared he now if rescued or betrayed; Resistance were as useless as if Seyd Yet lived to view the doom his ire decreed. (ll.1615-18)

He would, if he could, will Seyd back into existence, presumably so that he can have a pointed wooden stake rammed up his bottom after all! The scenario is so weird and stupid that we may suspect that Byron, finding his readers asinine enough to rave over his two previous tales, is now seeing how far he can go. His foolish notes, relating to Archbishop Blackbourne, Jean Lafitte, and so on, reinforce the suspicion that his intention is satirical – he’s flourishing his charlatanism in the readers’ faces and defying them to name it for what it is, just like Chaucer’s Pardoner. As Ghislaine McDayter argues, Byron’s “romantic” heroes, so far from being seductive, as in the cliché, operate in reality as patriarchal oppressors and deferrers of all desire, including their own. In The Corsair, she writes, Medora … is the embodiment of sensuality. She resides in a tower protected by the pirates and filled with the spoils of their battles. It is a pleasure palace of wine, lilting song, sherbets, and soft flesh, and it exists for Conrad almost as a constant scourge. He does not surrender to its pleasures, but rather takes pleasure in the repeated denial of his desire. If

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the Freudian hysteric is a subject who desires endlessly to desire, deferring satisfaction at all costs, then Conrad certainly fits the psychoanalytic bill.29

In the case of Lara, the theme of bisexuality is even more clearly stated, in the figure of the hero’s page, Kaled, who is, of course, a woman dressed up, and may indeed even be Gulnare dressed up, thus living up to Conrad’s re-sexualisation of her, just seen: If aught he loved, ’twas Lara; but was shown His faith in reverence and in deeds alone; In mute attention; and his care, which guessed Each wish, fulfilled it ere the tongue expressed. Still there was haughtiness in all he did, A spirit deep that brooked not to be chid; His zeal, though more than that of servile hands, In act alone obeys, his air commands; As if ’twas Lara’s less than his desire That thus he served, but surely not for hire. ʊʊʊʊʊ Of higher birth he seemed, and better days, Nor mark of vulgar toil that hand betrays, So femininely white it might bespeak Another sex, when matched with that smooth cheek, But for his garb, and something in his gaze, More wild and high than woman’s eye betrays; A latent fierceness that far more became His fiery climate than his tender frame; True, in his words it broke not from his breast, But from his aspect might be more than guessed. (ll.584-83)

The intriguing beauty of the epicene is vividly done here: it’s what Orsino sees in Cesario, and what Jacques sees in Ganymede. Kaled’s relationship with Lara is an obvious reflection of the relationship the cross-dressing Caroline Lamb would like to have had with Byron: Oh God, can you give me up if I am so dear? Take me with you, – Take me, my master, my friend. Who will fight for you, serve you, in sickness and health, live but for your wishes and die when that can please you – who so faithfully

29: Ghislaine McDayter, Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture (SUNY Press, 2009), pp.93-4.

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Byron, writing to Murray about a short-sighted comment by Hobhouse on Lara, said Mr. Hobhouse is right as for his conclusion31 – but I deny the premises – the name only is Spanish – the country is not Spain but the Moon. –32

The same could be said about the supposedly oriental locations of all the “Turkish” Tales. They’re all set on “the Moon”. Byron’s Islam is fake;33 his oriental detail is a bluff, and when he writes “I don’t care one lump of Sugar for my poetry – but for my costume – and my correctness on those points (of which I think the funeral was a proof) I will combat lustily. –”34 he’s subjecting his innocent and eagerly-gullible publisher to a confidence-trick. Byron’s obsessive way of keeping all important mysteries in Lara mysterious up to the end and beyond is a metaphor for his method throughout the tales – it’s the opposite of Mrs Radcliffe’s explicatory method in her Gothic novels. Goaded by his obvious attempts to tantalise us, we start to offer solutions of our own. The puzzle he refuses to solve near the end relates to Kaled (by now revealed as feminine): They were not common links that formed the chain That bound to Lara Kaled’s heart and brain; But that wild tale she brooked not to unfold, And sealed is now each lip that could have told. (ll.1181-4)

Obviously, she “brooked not to unfold it” out of embarrassment at having to reveal that the man she loved could only tolerate her presence in drag. 30: Paul Douglass (ed.) The Whole Disgraceful Truth, (Palgrave 2004), p.107. 31: H. had pointed out that Lara’s first line is wrong, since Spain never had serfs. 32: B. to Murray, from Hastings, July 24th 1814; text from NLS Ms.43488; BLJ IV 145-6. 33: See Seyed Mohammad Marandi, The Concubine of Abydos, 2005 Byron Journal (2), pp.97-108, and Byron’s Infidel and the Muslim Fisherman, K.-S.R. 20 (2006) pp.133-54. 34: B. to Murray, from 4, Bennet Street, London, late 1813; text from NLS Ms.43487; BLJ III 164-5.

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In an 1820 note to the unpublished Hints from Horace, Byron sums up the strange state of mind he was in when writing the Turkish Tales: … almost all I have written, has been mere Passion, passion it is true of different kinds – but always always passion – for in me (if it be not an Irishism to say so) my indifference was a kind of Passion – the result of experience and not the philosophy of Nature.

… by which I take him to mean that both the heat of writing them, the affront represented as much by the blind enthusiasm with which they, and their “different kinds” of “passion” were greeted, as by the negative criticism they received, left him equally cold. He wrote them as if under a spell, compelled by urges he only half-comprehended. As if bored and bewildered at the public’s seeming blindness to the secrets he’s dangling before them, Byron drops the theme of bisexuality from the last two Tales: Hugo in Parisina is hetero, and Alp in The Siege of Corinth indifferent to emotional tugs and ties altogether, being motivated solely by resentment, aggression and malice. Still, in Hugo’s speech before his father in Parisina, Byron depicts another strong malemale identification – though this time it’s oedipal: From thee – this tamelessness of heart – From thee – nay, wherefore dost thou start? From thee in all their vigour came My arm of strength, my soul of flame – Thou didst not give me life alone, But all that made me more thine own. See what thy guilty love hath done! Repaid thee with too like a son! (ll.288-95)

And Azo’s suffering is not unlike the Giaour’s. He, too, has amputated a vital part of himself: Azo’s age was wretched still. The tainted branches of the tree, If lopped with care, a strength may give, By which the rest shall bloom and live All greenly fresh and wildly free; But if the lightning, in its wrath, The waving boughs with fury scathe, The massy trunk the ruin feels, And never more a leaf reveals. (ll.578-86)

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At last, in The Siege of Corinth, all traces of bonding between man and man disappear. Alp and Minotti (who might have been his father-in-law) stand simple antagonists, poles apart, with, now Francesca is no more, nothing to bind them. Murray sent Byron, on November 15th 1815, three cheques for £500 each, as payment for Parisina and The Siege of Corinth. Byron tore them up. Thus Byron’s work develops from one confessional poem which only his Cambridge friends were intended to see, and which only they could read properly, to a series of five confessional poems intended for the public, which nobody can read properly. He consistently refuses to be paid for them. In Beppo, he pulls the plug on the game he’s been playing. The poem is, as M.K. Joseph writes, “like one of the Turkish Tales turned inside-out; Beppo’s life as slave, renegade and pirate, which would have made the experience of an early Byronic hero, is relegated to the distant background ...”,35 and Byron’s jovial tone is at one with his self-satirical intention: But to my tale of Laura; for I find Digression is a sin that by degrees Becomes exceeding tedious to my Mind, And therefore may the reader too displease – The gentle reader – who may wax unkind, And caring little for the Author’s ease, Insist on knowing what he means, a hard And hapless situation for a Bard. Oh! that I had the art of easy writing What should be easy reading! could I scale Parnassus, where the Muses sit inditing Those pretty poems never known to fail! How quickly would I print (the world delighting) A Grecian, Syrian, or Assyrian tale, And sell you, mixed with Western Sentimentalism, Some samples of the finest Orientalism. § §: The “finest Orientalism”: a new phrase for a very common sort of poetry. For its meaning, consult Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Act 2 Scene 4: “The What?” Mercutio: “The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes – these new turners of accent – “By Jesu, a very 35: M.K.Joseph, Byron the Poet, p.135.

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good blade – a very tall man – a very fine whore.” (Beppo sts.50-1 and authorial note)

He is facetious. Had readers really demanded to know what he meant by The Giaour, Selim, Conrad, Lara and Kaled, it would indeed have been “a hard / And hapless situation” for him: but nobody did, assuming them to be the subjects of “easy reading”, whereas in fact they were coded depictions of his own “difficult” sexual ambivalence. The italicised “Assyrian” implies both the asininity of his self-blinkered readership, and, via an obvious pun, (compare “Arseniew of modern Greece” at Don Juan VII, 15, 3), the real subject of his London poems (compare also “my pen / is at the bottom of a page”).36 Whether Mercutio is quoted just as a lisping fantastico, or whether Byron anticipates Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of him as a self-flaunting gay (“Oh Romeo, oh that she were / An open-arse, and thou a poperin pear”), is up to individual readers to decide. If only the Giaour had been able to “borrow [Hassan’s] smallclothes for the day”, as Beppo borrows the Count’s … whose smallclothes would Conrad have liked to borrow? Those of Giaffir, or of Gulnare? We know whose smallclothes he’d like to remove – but young Gonsalvo’s viewpoint on such things is not articulated. ————— Byron’s later revulsion against the Tales was strong (starting with the Beppo stanzas just quoted), but insufficient weight is given to what he felt: if you take it on board, you’re plunged into the horrid world of literary evaluation, which is anathema in our twenty-first century academe, where, as Mrs. Moore discovered in the Marabar Caves, “everything exists, nothing has value”. Between February 7th and 10th 1821 Byron wrote his Letter to John Murray, about William Lisle Bowles’ denigration of Pope. It was published on March 31st, and contains the following: The attempt of the poetical populace of the present day to obtain an ostracism against Pope is as easily accounted for as the Athenian’s shell against Aristides – they are tired of hearing him always called “the Just.” They are also fighting for life – for if he maintains his station, they will reach their own – by falling. They have raised a mosque by the side of a Grecian temple of the purest architecture, and more barbarous than the 36: Beppo, 99, 5.

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To Shelley he wrote, on May 20th 1822 (shortly before Shelley’s death), speaking of an unsympathetic Edinburgh Review article on the tragedies: You see what it is to throw pearls to Swine – – as long as I wrote the exaggerated nonsense which has corrupted the public taste – they applauded to the very echo – and now that I have really composed within these three or four years some things which should “not willingly be let die” – the whole herd snort and grumble and return to wallow in their mire. – However it is fit that I should pay the penalty of spoiling them – as no man has contributed more than me in my earlier compositions to produce that exaggerated & false taste – it is a fit retribution that anything [like a?] classical production should be received as these plays have been treated. – –

His reaction is in the name of classicism, not of sexual propriety; he would have Shelley believe that his unstageable tragedies are the necessary corrective to the trash with which he had prostituted his talent during his Years of Fame. We may disagree, and find Beppo and Don Juan to be the better candidates for improving public taste. Don Juan especially, which is also very confessional indeed, but in a wittier and more wide-ranging idiom than either Childe Harold or the Turkish Tales. The male but passive Juan, with his “half-girlish face”, “As warm in heart as feminine in feature,” surrounded (and occasionally dressed-up, or cross-

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dressed), by active women, is a much more complex, amusing – and franker – demonstration of Byron’s interest in the epicene than anything in his “romantic” work. ————— In between The Siege of Corinth and Don Juan are sandwiched those two massive fillers, the third and fourth cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, for which, as I’ve said, Byron received not just a standard John Murray payment, but a total of 4,600 guineas. There’s nothing dubious about either poem, nothing intimate except an unexceptionable lyric (The Castled Crag of Drachenfels) addressed to Augusta. One horrid stanza about Caroline Lamb (“If to forgive be heaping Coals of fire”) was excised from Canto IV. The only place where any kind of even potential sexual transgression is glanced at is that of Rousseau’s Julie, which is already world-famous for being ethically felt and sentimentally unconsummated. Childe Harold III and IV are styled for the market which Byron knew and despised. But at the same time as Canto III, he wrote Manfred. —————

Incest Augusta Leigh, Byron’s half-sister, was the most important woman in his life, and he the most important man in hers. It’s Sophocles’ Antigone who says that husbands and lovers may come and go, but one’s brother is one’s brother forever and there’s nothing one can do about it. The What Might Have Been relationship of Byron and Augusta is summed-up by Byron on September 17th 1816: What a fool I was to marry—and you not very wise— my dear—we might have lived so single and so happy—as old maids and bachelors; I shall never find any one like you—nor you (vain as it may seem) like me. We are just formed to pass our lives together, and therefore we—at least—I—am by a crowd of circumstances removed from the only being who could ever have loved me, or whom I can unmixedly feel attached to.

Augusta was two years Byron’s senior, and they did not meet until their teens. That their love was incestuous seems probable. Incest being, as

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we know from our reading of Mario Praz, an important “Romantic” thing, prejudice is in favour of this conclusion. The closest we have to circumstantial evidence is Byron’s letter to Augusta of May 17th 1819: But I have never ceased nor can cease to feel for a moment that perfect & boundless attachment which bound & binds me to you—which renders me utterly incapable of real love for any other human being—what could they be to me after you? My own we may have been very wrong—but I repent of nothing except that cursed marriage—& your refusing to continue to love me as you had loved me—I can neither forget nor quite forgive you for that precious piece of reformation.—but I can never be other than I have been—and whenever I love anything it is because it reminds me in some way or other of yourself— for instance I not long ago attached myself to a Venetian for no earthly reason (although a pretty woman) but because she was called and she often remarked (without knowing the reason) how fond I was of the name.—It is heart-breaking to think of our long Separation—and I am sure more than punishment enough for all our sins—Dante is more humane in his “Hell” for he places his unfortunate lovers (Francesca of Rimini & Paolo whose case fell a good deal short of ours—though sufficiently naughty) in company—and though they suffer—it is at least together.— If ever I return to England—it will be to see you—and recollect that in all time—& place—and feelings—I have never ceased to be the same to you in heart—Circumstances may have ruffled my manner—& hardened my spirit—you may have seen me harsh & exasperated with all things around me; grieved & tortured with your new resolution,— & the soon after persecution of that infamous fiend who drove me from my Country & conspired against my life— by endeavouring to deprive me of all that could render it precious—but remember that even then you were the sole object that cost me a tear? and what tears! do you remember our parting?37

“(Francesca of Rimini & Paolo whose case fell a good deal short of ours—though sufficiently naughty)” seems evidence enough. Paolo and Francesca weren’t incestuous siblings, merely adulterers. Byron is obviously proud to have out-sinned them, just as he’s proud of having 37: BLJ VI 129.

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swum as well as both the mythical Leander and the historical Mr Ekenhead. Augusta’s letter to her half-brother of late 1814 (one of the few to have survived) implies by its constant “+”s that there’s more between them than words can express: My Dearest B + As usual I have but a short allowance of time to reply to your tendresses + but a few lines I know will be better than none – at least I find them so + It was very + very + good of you to think of me amidst all the visitors &c &c. I have scarcely recovered mine of yesterday. La Dame did talk so, oh my stars, but at last it saved me a world of trouble. Oh, but she found out a likeness in your picture to Mignonne who is of course very good humoured in consequence + I want to know dearest B. – your plans – when you come + when you go – umph! When the writings travel, when ye cake is to be cut, when the Bells are to ring &c. &c. &c. By the bye, my visitors are acquainted with A. & did praise her to the skies. They say her health has been hurt by studying &c. &c. &c. I have not a moment more my dearest + except to say ever thine.38

Hence Byron’s delight at a discovery he makes in Milan. See his letter of October 15th 1816: What has delighted me most is a manuscript collection (preserved in the Ambrosian library), of original love-letters and verses of Lucretia de Borgia & Cardinal Bembo; and a lock of hair—so long—and fair & beautiful—and the letters so pretty & so loving that it makes one wretched not to have been born sooner to have at least seen her. And pray what do you think is one of her signatures?—why this + a Cross—which she says “is to stand for her name &c.” Is not this amusing? I suppose you know that she was a famous beauty, & famous for the use she made of it; & that she was the love of this same Cardinal Bembo (besides a story about her papa Pope Alexander & her brother Caesar Borgia— which some people don’t believe—& others do), and that after all she ended with being Duchess of Ferrara, and an 38: Augusta Leigh to B., late 1814: (Sources: Peter Gunn, My Dearest Augusta, Bodley Head 1968, p.120, and Michael and Melissa Bakewell, Augusta Leigh, Byron’s Half-Sister, a Biography, Chatto and Windus, 2000, pp.141-2).

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excellent mother & wife also; so good as to be quite an example.

The confident frankness with which he describes to his half-sister his liaisons with Claire Claremont, Marianna Segati, Margherita Cogni and Teresa Guiccioli, could not be so great unless he knew that Augusta was aware of the primacy she would always have in his affection. The way she (with Lady Melbourne) encouraged him to get married shows the same confidence – confidence which the outcome demonstrates to be all too well-founded. ————— The circumspect Byron often skirted literary impropriety and depicted, or almost depicted, incest in his poetry. To Edward Daniel Clarke he wrote on December 15th 1813, referring to The Bride of Abydos: I felt compelled to make my hero & heroine relatives – as you well know that none else could {there} obtain that degree of intercourse leading to genuine affection – I had nearly made them rather too much akin to each other – & though the wild passions of the East – & some great examples in Alfieri – Ford – & Schiller39 (to stop short of Antiquity) might have pleaded in favour of a copyist – yet the times & the North (not Frederic but our Climate) induced {me} to alter their consanguinity & confine them to cousinship. – –40

He speaks with partiality. Only one of his examples supports his argument. The implication in “the wild passions of the East” that unnatural lust and Islam go hand in hand, may be dismissed as bluff. Alfieri depicted tragically-repressed passion of daughter for father in his tragedy Mirra, and in Italy Byron would choke at a performance. John Ford alone had gone the whole sibling hog in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore,41 besides which Schiller’s portrayal of passionate but unconsummated stepson-stepmother

39: McGann (CPW III 436) mentions Schiller’s The Bride of Messina here: but Don Karlos seems the better candidate. 40: See also B. to John Galt, December 11th 1813 (BLJ III 197). 41: It’s not clear that B. had read ‘Tis Pity. This is one of only two references to Ford in his letters. The Duchess of Malfi would have provided him with a disagreeable example of sibling lust: but he never refers to it.

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love in Don Karlos is mild, as well as moral.42 “Antiquity” offers only further passionate but unconsummated and one-sided stepmother-stepson infatuation in Hippolytus, and in the best-known incest drama of them all, Oedipus the King, neither party knows who the other is, and, to put it mildly, both feel bad when they discover what’s happened. In The Bride of Abydos, Giaffir (not, admittedly, a disinterested party), queries the manhood of his nephew Selim, thus: “Thou, Greek in soul, if not in creed, Must pore where babbling waters flow, And watch unfolding roses blow. Would that yon orb, whose matin glow Thy listless eyes so much admire, Would lend thee something of his fire! Thou, who would’st see this battlement By Christian cannon piecemeal rent – Nay, tamely view old Stamboul’s wall Before the dogs of Moscow fall – Nor strike one stroke for life and death Against the curs of Nazareth! Go – let thy less than woman’s hand Assume the distaff – not the brand”. (Bride, 87-100)

Nothing Selim does – as opposed to what he talks of doing – contradicts this judgement. A hot heterosexual he isn’t. Our suspicion should be aroused by the poem’s title, for (as with Hebrew Melodies, many of which are not Hebrew and, as set by Nathan, none are melodic), neither the word “Bride” nor the word “Abydos” have anything to do with the narrative. Meanwhile, the realisation that she is not Selim’s sister produces, in Zuleika, a strange disappointment. Selim speaks: But had not thine own lips declared How much of that young heart I shared, I could not, must not, yet have shown The darker secret of my own. – In this I speak not now of love – That – let time, truth, and peril prove; But first – Oh! never wed another – Zuleika! I am not thy brother!” 42: B. to Edward Daniel Clarke, December 15th 1813: (most of text from B.L.Egerton 2869 ff.11-12; BLJ III 199-200).

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“Assyrian Tales”: Byron, Homosexuality and Incest 11. “Oh! not my brother! – yet unsay – God! am I left alone on earth To mourn – I dare not curse – the day That saw my solitary birth? Oh! thou wilt love me now no more! My sinking heart foreboded ill; But know me all I was before, Thy sister – friend – Zuleika still. Thou led’st me hear perchance to kill; If thou hast cause for vengeance – See! My breast is offered – take thy fill! Far better with the dead to be Than live thus nothing now to thee – Perhaps far worse – for now I know Why Giaffir always seemed thy foe; And I, alas! am Giaffir’s child, For whom thou wert contemned – reviled – If not thy sister – wouldst thou save My life – Oh! bid me be thy slave!” (Bride of Abydos 639-66)

If they’re not brother and sister, she sees no prospect of his loving her. And – now he has revealed himself – Selim embarks upon his speech (lines 633 to line 972, 339 lines in a poem 1204 lines long – over a quarter of the work’s length), an interlude which, whatever it tells her about his father’s murder and his own perhaps imaginary piratical life, functions immediately as a brake on whatever romantic or erotic feelings they ought, logically, now feel free to express. From whatever subconscious inhibition, Selim’s “coming out” unleashes in him nothing but a torrent of words (“But now too long I’ve held thine ear” he says near the end). Now he’s not her brother, the possibility of love suddenly becomes remote. Rather than do the obvious thing and give her a hug, the hero does what, in Tristram Shandy, Uncle Toby asserts that Corporal Trim did with the lady who was rubbing his leg, and just as Byron did with Frances Wedderburn Webster – he “made a speech”.43 Faced with a loving and available woman, all he can do is talk, like Sir Epicure Mammon faced with Doll Common in The Alchemist. Talk is for him a displacement activity, a fetishistic alternative to sex. Within a hundred or so lines of its termination, the apparently ungenitured Selim (who may, as Gabriele 43: B. to Lady Melbourne, October 8th 1813: (text from NLS Ms.43470 f.82; BLJ III 133-6), quoting Sterne, Tristram Shandy, VIII 22.

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Poole has argued,44 be lying throughout it anyway), is dead. We fear that Giaffir’s aspersions on his masculinity may be accurate: Thou, when thine arm should bend the bow, And hurl the dart, and curb the steed, Thou, Greek in soul, if not in creed, Must pore where babbling waters flow, And watch unfolding roses blow. (ll.85-9)

In Manfred, Byron almost dares what, in The Bride, he draws back from: Astarte! my beloved – speak to me – I have so much endured – so much endure – Look on me – the grave hath not changed thee more Than I am changed for thee – thou loved’st me Too much, as I loved thee – we were not made To torture thus each other, though it were The deadliest sin to love as we have loved; Say that thou loath’st me not – that I do bear This punishment for both – that thou wilt be One of the blessed – and that I shall die … (Manfred II iv 118-27)

Much later, in Cain, he revels in the (irrefutable) fact that the first generation after Adam and Eve had no alternative to sibling incest: Lucifer: What is that Which being nearest to thine eyes is still More beautiful than beauteous things remote? Cain: My sister Adah. – All the stars of Heaven, The deep blue Noon of Night, lit by an Orb Which looks a Spirit, or a Spirit’s World – The hues of twilight – the Sun’s gorgeous coming – His Setting indescribable, which fills My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him Along that Western Paradise of Clouds – The forest shade, the Green bough, the bird’s voice – The vesper bird’s, which seems to sing of love, And mingles with the song of Cherubim, As the day closes over Eden’s walls; – 44: Poole, Gabriel. The Byronic Hero, Theatricality and Leadership, BJ Vol.38 No 1 2010, p.7.

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Lucifer speaks with nostalgia; and we have already read in The Giaour “There read of Cain the curse and crime”. Evidence for or against transgression might be collected by DNA samples from Augusta’s grave at Kensal Green, Byron’s at Hucknall Torkard, and the grave of their imagined daughter Medora Leigh at Versols-et-Lapeyre in France.45 But no-one in any Byron Society that I know – still less any English faculty that I know – has had the imagination, or the effrontery, to suggest such a thing.

————— To bring the essay round full circle: Byron would have understood the future of the tribe of Cain (after their enforced first-generation incest) to have been one of non-stop public homosexual orgying. Genesis 4, 17, tells us that Cain “builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch”. But, Pierre Bayle tells us, Josephus affirms, that Cain was a voluptuous Man, and a Robber, and that his Descendants grew worse and worse. Add to what he hath said the Description that Methodius has given us of the Manners of that Race, and you will see there is very good reason to compare the City of Enochia, built by Cain, to that, which a certain Macedonian King built for a Receptacle of all sorts of wicked and dissolute People; whence it was called Poneropolis. Impiety so horribly prevailed among the descendants of Cain, that, not content to defile one another’s Marriage-Beds, and enjoy their Mistresses in public, and in the Sight of all who had a mind to see them, they broke through the Laws of Nature, and abandoned themselves, Men and Women, to the Sin of NonConformity … Men like mad Creatures ran headlong into 45: Swynford Paddocks, the hotel at Six Mile Bottom just west of Newmarket which stands where the Leighs used to live, boasts three massive but inauthentic portraits on its main staircase: B., Augusta, and Medora.

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all manner of abominable Uncleanliness and the Darkness of the Night, and privacy of a Chamber, not sufficing for their scandalous Actions, would act their Filthiness in open day, and, in the Presence and view of the People, practise odious Familiarities not to be named. —— But the shameful Practices of that time were carried to such a length, as far exceeds the Bounds and Limits of Nature. It would be incredible, were it not asserted by Methodius, a grave and holy Author, that even then was introduced the Practice, which St Paul bewails in Idolaters, that Men with Men acted that which is unseemly, and Women burnt with Lust to Women.” 46

One can see why Byron liked Bayle’s Dictionary so much.

46: Mr Bayle’s Historical and Critical Dictionary, English translation, second edition, five vols, 1735-8, II 248: chapter on Cain, nC.

BYRON THE VAMPIRE, AND THE VAMPIRE WOMEN First published NBSR, January / July 2000

I: Charlotte Dacre Byron was not an automatic despiser of women who wrote. Intermittently rude about Maria Edgeworth (he refers her as having “a pencil under her petticoat”)1 he was delighted to receive praise from Elizabeth Inchbald.2 The fact that he had little time for Caroline Lamb’s Glenarvon 3 hardly sets him apart; and his sympathetic brand of orientalism was deeply influenced by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.4 He had a high opinion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Mary Godwin (now Mrs. Shelley) wrote “Frankenstein” – which you have reviewed thinking it Shelley’s – methinks it is a wonderful work for a Girl of nineteen – not nineteen indeed – at that time. – –5

He may have read Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which John Murray published, and there may be a reference to its twenty-third chapter in Julia’s letter, at Don Juan I 194: “Man’s love is of his life a thing apart, “‘Tis Woman’s whole Existence; Man may range “The Court, Camp, Church, the Vessel, and the Mart, “Sword, Gown, Gain, Glory, offer in exchange “Pride, Fame, Ambition, to fill up his heart,

A paper given at the Cambridge University Romantics Postgraduate Seminar, Queens’ College Cambridge, on October 28th 1999. My thanks to Beatrice Groves for her co-operation. 1: BLJ VII 217. 2: BLJ III 236. 3: BLJ V 131. 4: See Don Juan V, 3, 8. 5: B. to Murray, May 15th 1819 (text from B.L.Ashley 4740; BLJ VI 125-6).

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“And few there are whom these can not estrange; Man has all these resources, we but one, To love again, and be again undone. 6

Hobhouse thought the sentiment there was borrowed from Madame de Staël’s Corinne Book XVIII, v, a passage Byron annotated7 and Andrew Nicholson has recently suggested that Byron takes the idea from Ovid;8 in the first two cases, a female writer may have given him the material for one of his most sympathetic insights into women’s contemporary lot. We must admit, however, that he acknowledged the debt in no case – supposing there to have been one. This paper deals with two woman writers with whom he enjoyed mixed literary relationships, about one of whom he wrote a lot, and about one of whom he wrote very little: and, as I hope to show, he less he wrote, the greater his creative debt seems to have been. Byron had taken rough note of the verse of Charlotte Dacre in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, speaking of her under her pseudonym Rosa Matilda: Far be’t from me unkindly to upbraid The lovely ROSA’s prose in masquerade, Whose strains, the faithful echoes of her mind, Leave wondering comprehension far behind …9

Jerome McGann claims that these lines represent a betrayal of Byron’s earlier indebtedness to Dacre’s two volumes Hours of Solitude of 1802, in Byron’s own Hours of Idleness of 1807.10 McGann takes the likeness between the two titles to be no coincidence, but “a massive act of allusion”

6: See Persuasion, Chapter 23 “... Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer-lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments. Nay, it would be too hard upon you, if it were otherwise. You have difficulties, privations, and dangers enough to struggle with. You are always labouring and toiling, exposed to every risk and hardship. Your home, country, friends, all quitted. Neither time, nor health, nor life, to be called your own, It would be too hard indeed” (with a faltering voice) “if woman’s feelings were to be added to all this.” 7: CPW V 680 St. 194n; CMP 22-4. 8: See 1999 Byron Journal, pp. 9: CPW I 253. 10: See My Brain is Feminine, in Byron Augustan and Romantic, ed. Rutherford, pp.26-51.

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by Byron towards Dacre.11 This claim is hard to sustain, for Hours of Solitude is much less cavalier-flippant than Byron’s youthful volume, and more Gothic, featuring numerous poems about passionate and even guilty love, as well as a substantial leavening of death, horror, spectres, skeletons and mould. However, Byron’s charge of incomprehensibility remains gross, for Dacre writes with clarity, if not with genius. Some of her love poems are written in male personae – Byron never attempted the complementary experiment.12 Here is an example of Dacre’s verse, from the first of her two 1802 volumes. The poem, which stayed with Byron for some time, is The Mistress to the Spirit of her Lover, a nine-stanza soliloquy by a woman whose lover, though dead, seems still to hover before her. The poem is presented by Dacre firstly as a prose imitation of Ossian, and is then versified. Here are stanzas four to six of the verse version: In the darkness of night, as I sit on the rock, I see a thin form on the precipice brink; Oh Lover illusive, my senses to mock – ’Tis madness presents if I venture to think. Unreal that form which now hovers around, Unreal those garments which float on the wind, Unreal those footsteps that touch not the ground, Unreal those features, wan vision, I find. Oh vain combination! – oh! embodied mist! I dare not to lean on thy transparent form; I dare not to clasp thee, tho’ sadly I list – Thou would’st vanish, wild spirit, and leave me forlorn.13

It is but a short step and a gender-switch from the perhaps unadventurous rhythms in which Dacre writes here, to the grief and implacability of Alp faced with the spirit of Francesca in The Siege of Corinth, or, still more important, to the anguish of Manfred faced with the unrelenting spirit of Astarte in the Hall of Arimanes. Another poem of Dacre’s, Moorish Combat 14 is, in sketch, a clear prefiguration of The Giaour, in that it features a triangular conflict 11: Ibid p.27. 12: Hours of Solitude was reprinted by Garland in 1978, with an introduction by Donald H.Reiman. 13: Hours of Solitude, vol II p.35. 14: Ibid, vol I pp 108-12.

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between a Moorish girl, her lover, and his rival: the rival kills the lover, and the girl, much more full of initiative than the notoriously passive Leila in Byron’s poem, then kills the rival. The abuse which Dacre’s volumes receive in English Bards, though facetious enough in the short run, should thus have given Byron some embarrassment in the long run – but although he does express shame at English Bards, he shows none on account of his treatment of her. In joking about her, he can not, from the perspective of 1809, see how influential some of her ideas will be for him later. Or not influential as the case may be: her sexy passages are certainly more so than his, which are selfconscious and literary by contrast. Here is Dacre, in a stanza from Moorish Combat: How vain to stem their rapture as it flow’d, Or whisper to their stagg’ring sense, beware! His eyes inebriate wander’d o’er her charms, While hers to earth were cast with chastened air. 15

… and here a verse from Byron’s To Mary: Now, by my soul, ‘tis most delight To view each other panting, dying, In love’s extatic posture lying, Grateful to feeling, as to sight. 16

To Mary was thought too hot by Byron’s Southwell friends to appear in Hours of Idleness: but it is of the same period. It is with Byron’s reading in Dacre’s novels that I wish to deal next. Byron was more extensively read in the pulp fiction of his day than any other poet of the “romantic” movement. “I have also read (to my regret at present)”, he writes as a postscript to his 1807 reading list, “above four thousand novels …”17 He goes on to acknowledge a clutch of respectable novelists, Cervantes, Fielding, Smollett, and so on: but I should like to mention one work which he seems to have read in the first decade of the century, and which, whether he knew it or not, seems to have stayed with him for a decade and a half. In the twenty-sixth chapter of Dacre’s Zofloya (1806) the ironically-named heroine, Victoria, has revealed to Henriquez, her brother-in-law, how much she has always 15: Moorish Combat, HoS I 110. 16: To Mary, 45-8. 17: CMP 6.

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adored him. He is disgusted, for his brother – her husband – died only recently (and, though he does not know it, at her hand, assisted by the black demon who gives his name to the book). Betrothed to another anyway, he rejects her with detestation, and she responds with ill-judged violence: “Miserable youth!” she cried – “it is enough – your insulting coolness, your bitter reproaches, I could have borne, – have borne, proud as I am, with patience! – but that you should dare, without trembling, to acknowledge in my presence, your love for another” – “Love!” interrupted Henriquez with enthusiasm – “Love! – say, adoration, idolatry! by heaven my Lilla is a gem too bright to shed her pure rays beneath this contaminated roof, – oh! wretched Victoria,” he continued, with a bitter smile, “and could you attempt to talk of love to the lover of Lilla?” – Can language describe the feelings of Victoria? Her brain worked with wildest rage, producing almost instant madness! – Yet revenge, thirsting revenge, was the predominant sensation of her soul, swallowing up every other! – by an effort, and self-command, scarcely credible, she reined in the tumult of her passion, and forebore to recriminate upon Henriquez. – What! drive him from the castle, and lose thereby the power of sacrificing the abhorred Lilla to her vengeance, the pigmy, the immaterial speck, that she had deemed unworthy of a thought! To lose too, for ever, the possibility of softening, (perhaps even yet subduing) the stern insensitivity of Henriquez? – No – the sacrifice to frantic rage would have been too great! – Her decision was prompt, and instantaneous. – Covering her face with her hands, she sank into a chair, and audibly sobbed! A reply so different to what he had taught himself to expect, knowing the violence of her nature, at once surprised and affected Henriquez. – In a moment he regretted the asperity with which he had spoken … 18

Why Dacre changed from promising poetry to second-rate fiction may have something to do with the need for money – we know very little about her. Byron had shown in a note to English Bards that he’d read Zofloya, for he mentions her “sundry novels” (in fact she wrote four) “in the style

18: Charlotte Dacre, Zofloya; or, The Moor, A Romance of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Kim Ian Michasiw, OUP World’s Classics 1997 (hereafter Zofloya) p.196.

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of the first edition of the Monk”.19 What Byron read casually, as usual, he remembered. If an echo arises as we read the Zofloya passage above, it is of the encounter between the immovably chaste Juan and the irresistibly seductive Gulbeyaz, in Don Juan Canto V – except that it is not the woman who weeps at first: She now conceived all difficulties past, And deemed herself extremely condescending When, being made her property at last, Without more preface, in her blue eyes blending Passion and power, a glance on him She cast, And merely saying, “Christian, can’st thou love?” Conceived that phrase was quite enough to move. – And so it was, in proper time and place; But Juan, who had still his mind o’erflowing With Haidee’s Isle, and soft Ionian face, Felt the warm blood, which in his face was glowing, Rush back upon his heart, which filled apace And left his cheeks as pale as Snowdrops blowing; These words went through his Soul like Arab Spears, So that he spoke not, but burst into tears. –

To have the man cry at the idea of being desired is a witty variant on Dacre. Juan’s tears don’t take long to prompt some from Gulbeyaz: … Gulbeyaz, though she knew not why, Felt an odd glistening moisture in her eye.

Even though she has, like Victoria, her own black assistant (the nondemoniacal eunuch Baba) on the watch for her husband, time is, for an adulterous Sultana, of the essence: To lose the hour would make her quite a Martyr, And they had wasted now almost a quarter. –

After Byron has digressed a little, she tries a mixture of imperiousness and physicality:

19: CPW I 413: the first editions of The Monk had to be censored before reprinting.

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Byron the Vampire, and the Vampire Women At length, in an Imperial way, She laid Her hand on his, and bending on him eyes Which needed not an empire to persuade, Looked into his for love, where none replies; Her brow grew black, but she would not upbraid, That being the last thing a proud woman tries; She rose, and, pausing one chaste moment, threw Herself upon his breast, and there She grew.

Further memories of Zofloya may be at work here, for Dacre, in one of her rare moments of physical description, refers to Victoria’s … strong though noble features, her dignified carriage, her authoritative tone – her boldness, her insensibility, her violence … 20

But none of these qualities are of any use to Gulbeyaz, for Juan’s pride, chastity and moral abhorrence are – like those of Dacre’s Henriquez – more than equal to the occasion: … looking coldly on her face, he cried, “The prisoned Eagle will not pair, nor I “Serve a Sultana’s sensual phantasy.

Byron then lists several of Gulbeyaz’s literary antecedents (without mentioning Victoria): Suppose – but you already have supposed – The Spouse of Potiphar, the Lady Booby, Phedra, and all which Story has disclosed Of good examples; Pity! that so few by Poets, and private tutors, are exposed To educate, Ye Youth of Europe! you by; But when you have supposed the few we know, You can’t suppose Gulbeyaz’ angry brow. (Don Juan V st.131)

Her resentment becomes very passionate indeed: A Storm it raged, and like the Storm it passed, Passed without words; in fact she could not speak, And then her Sex’s Shame broke in at last, A Sentiment till then in her but weak, 20: Zofloya, p.194.

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But now it flowed in natural and fast As water through an unexpected leak, For She felt humbled, and humiliation Is sometimes good for people in her Station … (Don Juan V st.137) … Her first thought was to cut off Juan’s head, Her second, to cut only his – acquaintance; Her third, to ask him where he had been bred, Her fourth to rally him into repentance, Her fifth to call her Maids and go to bed, Her Sixth to stab herself, her Seventh, to sentence The lash to Baba; but her grand resource Was to sit down again, and cry of course. – (Don Juan V st.139)

Zofloya reasserts itself at last, in the echo of the crying Victoria quoted above; but by now so many subtexts are swirling in the depths of the Byronic stew that we are losing sight of Dacre completely. As Itsuyo Higashinaka points out,21 stanza 139 here is derived primarily from Joseph Andrews: Betty the chambermaid, having rejected her master, Mr. Towwouse, has just thrown herself at Andrews, although with as little success as either Victoria or Gulbeyaz: Betty was in the most violent Agitation at this Disappointment. Rage and Lust pulled her Heart, as with two Strings, two different Ways; one Moment she thought of stabbing Joseph, the next, of taking him in her Arms, and devouring him with Kisses; but the latter Passion was far more prevalent. Then she thought of revenging his Refusal on herself; but while she was engaged on this Meditation, happily Death presented himself to her in so many Shapes of drowning, hanging, poisoning, &c. that her distracted Mind could resolve on none. In this Perturbation of Spirit, it accidentally occurred to her Memory, that her Master’s bed was not made ... 22

… and, this being a comic novel, she ends up in bed with her master Mr. Tow-wouse after all – any lover being preferable to none. Mrs. Towwouse, however, catches them; a violent row ensues; Betty loses her job, and Mr. Tow-wouse has to promise to spend the rest of his life in atonement.

21: Gulbeyaz and Joseph Andrews, Byron Journal, 1984 p.74. 22: Fielding, Joseph Andrews, I 18.

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Neither employment nor atonement carry much weight in the schemes of either Zofloya or Don Juan (neither does comedy, in the case of Zofloya, except of the unwitting sort) and Gulbeyaz’s tears at last have the same effect on Juan as those of Victoria do, temporarily, on Henriquez: Juan was moved, he had made up his Mind To be impaled, or quartered as a dish For dogs; or to be slain with pangs refined, Or thrown to Lions, or made baits for fish; And thus heroically stood resigned, Rather than sin except to his own wish; But all his great preparatives for dying Dissolved like snow before a woman crying. – (Don Juan V st.141)

… just as does the hard heart of Henriquez before the tears of Victoria. There are more points of contact between Zofloya and Byron. The novel’s later chapters are set in a huge Alpine cave, with banditti all around, and, in the centre, … a graceful figure, distinguished by his high and single-plumed helmet and by the fierce eccentric costume of his dress. He looked, and was the chief of the Condottieri, elected unanimously as their leader, on the death of a famed chief who had preceded him. His face was concealed by a mask … 23

The scene would have given Byron hints for the Hall of Arimanes (which is presumably located beneath the Alps) in the second act of Manfred – more evidence of his excellent memory, and of his ability to take details from anywhere, and to re-collate them at his creative convenience. The masked leader turns out to be Victoria’s brother – a point not borrowed by Byron in Manfred, though what Victoria undergoes in the cave does, like Manfred’s ordeal, constitute a kind of test. Unlike Manfred, she fails it. Where she fails to forgive her mother for making her the woman she is, Astarte fails to forgive Manfred for doing … whatever it is we understand him to have done to her. But, where the destroyed Manfred defies the devils and lives to suffer further, the impenitent Victoria is taken out by her black familiar Zofloya, who is the devil in disguise (compare the end of The Monk, except that he’s not in disguise there) and cast by him into “the dreadful abyss”.24 23: Zofloya, p.237. 24: Zofloya, p.267.

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The Alpine cave reminds us further of that all-pervasive Byronic subtext, William Beckford’s Vathek, the influence of which upon the Hall of Arimanes scene in Manfred has often been noted. Vathek, like Victoria, has problems relating to his mother; like her, he has his familiar demon; like her and her mother, he and his mother meet their well-deserved but differing dooms in a great supernatural cavern. In 1805 Dacre had published the first of her novels, The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer, written, she tells us in her introduction, when she was eighteen, and only published at the encouragement of a friend. While by no means as “wonderful” as Frankenstein (Byron’s word, quoted above) it is highly literate, and shows – albeit without irony – the way the heroine’s passion and self-delusion triumph over her moral sense, by masquerading as her moral sense – rather in the way Byron portrays the same thing in Donna Julia. Here is a relevant passage. Sixteen-year-old Cazire, the oddly-named heroine, meets Fribourg, her married admirer, in the garden: It was one evening when, as usual, I had flown to the appointed spot; for Fribourg had long since silenced my scruples on that subject[;] he had said that on me alone depended the domestic tranquillity of an innocent wife, that as I raised or depressed his soul by my compliance or refusal of what he termed his guiltless wishes, the effects would be perceptible in his family. Happy in being thus furnished with excuses for the wildness of a disastrous passion, I suffered its fatal innovations with something so like pleasure that all my philosophy became powerless to resist it. 25

For the girl to be taken in by her seducer’s argument, that the proposed adultery is necessary for the happiness of his family, should be a comical idea, but Dacre, anxious throughout to be moral, presents it without smiling. Compare Don Juan I, stanzas 78-9: And even if by chance – and who can tell? The Devil’s so very sly – She should discover That all within was not so very well – And if still free – that such or such a lover Might please perhaps – a virtuous wife can quell Such thoughts, and be the better when they’re over, And if the Man should ask, ‘tis but denial; I recommend young ladies to make trial. –

25: The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer, Arno Press reprint 1972, Vol I pp. 182-3.

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Byron the Vampire, and the Vampire Women And then there are things such as Love divine – Bright, and immaculate, unmixed and pure, Such as the Angels think so very fine, And Matrons, who would be no less secure, Platonic, perfect, “just such love as mine”; Thus Julia said – and thought so, to be sure, And so I’d have her think, were I the man On whom her reveries celestial ran.

Although the title of Dacre’s 1807 novel The Libertine might lead us to expect otherwise (it is, after all, the title of the Don Juan play by Thomas Shadwell) I find no borrowings from it by Byron. It is at once lurid and at the same time of the most conservative morality, with a contrived plot governed by coincidence. The protagonist, weak and wicked but made sympathetic by the depth of his suffering, is uninteresting psychologically, and prefigures Byron’s Juan not at all. Zofloya’s Oxford editor draws attention to a parallel between the Chamois Hunter episode in Manfred and the start of Dacre’s last novel The Passions (1811).26 The lift is interesting, for, as with Moorish Combat and The Giaour, as with Zofloya and Don Juan V, Byron takes Dacre’s idea and turns it on its head. Dacre’s protagonist sees the Chamois Hunter asleep near an Alpine cliff: Byron’s Chamois Hunter sees Manfred as he contemplates jumping off an Alpine cliff. In Dacre’s novel (epistolary, for the most part) the Chamois Hunter seems at first the one who lives in a Byronically dangerous way: The face of the hunter, though he was still a young man, bore the marks of age; it was haggard, lean, and deeply indented; but his eyes, though sunk, were ferocious and wild, his dark brows were knit, and his features were those of a hardened warrior, scorning danger. “Why,” said I, “do you lead this life?” “I like it,” he replied. “How can you like an existence so hazardous, when the dreadful perils you encounter make each moment precarious?” “Life is always precarious,” he answered; “what matter whether a man dies by falling down a precipice, or in his bed?”27

26: Zofloya, p.xxv. 27: The Passions, Arno Press reprint 1974, vol. I pp.7–8.

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In Manfred, the Chamois Hunter is a type of Alpine professionalism and Christian normality, and Byron’s protagonist is the one who lives dangerously. However, Dacre’s cunning lies in the way in which, as the narrative of The Passions develops, more and more of her non-Alpine characters are revealed as slumbering on the brinks of metaphorical precipices, so that the Chamois Hunter, seeming at first freakish, soon becomes to seem normative.28 Byron’s memory for the novel’s detail is to be seen in his borrowing of such phrases as “I stand alone – I am a mouldering column in the midst of ruins” (ibid, vol. IV p. 1: compare Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV 25 1-3, “I … stand / A ruin amidst ruins”);29 and the repetition of the phrase “Oh, Julia!”, once the novel’s central adulterous intrigue is under way, is wearying enough for one to wish the speaker to be interrupted by the need to vomit, as is Don Juan in his address to Julia at the start of the second Canto.30 Charlotte Dacre surfaces twice later in Byron’s life, on both occasions in 1814. On April 20th 1814 Byron acknowledges having been “taken in” by Thomas Moore’s joking assertion that he had thought the Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, published four days previously, to be by “Rosa Matilda”.31 And earlier, on February 10th, he praises an answer to Lines to a Lady Weeping which has appeared in the Morning Post two days earlier. Dacre was the mistress of the paper’s editor (they had three children, but did not marry until 1815) and may be author of the following, which is addressed to Byron: Unblest by nature in thy mien, Pity might still have play’d her part, For oft compassion has been seen, To soften into love the heart. But when thy gloomy lines we read, And see display’d without control Th’ungentle thought, the Atheist creed, And all the rancour of the soul, When bold and shameless ev’ry tie, That GOD has twin’d around the heart, 28: Hours of Solitude features a poem called The Hunter of the Alps, about just such a man - see vol II pp.63-4. 29: The trope is common: it also occurs in Radcliffe’s The Romance of the Forest. 30: See also Tristram Shandy, Slawkenbergius’s Tale. 31: BLJ IV 100.

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Byron the Vampire, and the Vampire Women Thy malice teaches to defy, And act on earth a Demon’s part, Oh! then from misanthropic pride We shrink – but pity too the fate Of youth and talents misapplied, Which, if admired, we still must hate. 32

Byron’s intuitive commentary on this runs as follows: … in another [riposte], I am an atheist – a rebel – and, at last, the Devil (boiteux, I presume). My demonism seems to be a female’s conjecture: if so, I could convince her that I am but a mere mortal, – if a queen of the Amazons may be believed, who says DUL9RQFROR9RLIHL. I quote from memory, so my Greek is probably deficient: but the passage is meant to mean [Moore, our source for the letter, discreetly substitutes asterisks for the phrase “a lame beast covers best”, or, “a cripple makes the best fuck”].33

Alas, there is no record of Byron’s meeting Charlotte Dacre, so his threat – or promise – remained unfulfilled, and the only fluid expended in their relationship was ink.

Part II: Felicia Hemans [I am very grateful to William St. Clair and Susan Wolfson for their help with this half of the paper.] I don’t imagine Byron retained a detailed memory of Charlotte Dacre’s Hours of Solitude, The Passions, The Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer, The Libertine, or Zofloya (though Thomas Medwin writes that Shelley was “enraptured” by the last).34 Byron would be amused to know that some bits of Dacre’s books had sunk into his subconscious, whence he had, in his own idioms, regurgitated them. However, he was all too well aware of the work of the second female author about whom I wish to write. Felicia Hemans was, in sales, the most successful English-language poet of the nineteenth century, and is thus – though it’s hard to believe – in 32: LJ II 482. 33: B. to Moore, February 10th 1814 (text from Moore’s Life I 526-7; BLJ IV 512). 34: See The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1847, p.25, quoted Zofloya ed. Michasiw, p.xxiv.

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commercial terms, the most successful woman poet ever.35 She was anxious to make her facility for verse into a source of cash, and had, after three juvenile productions, obtained, as publisher, none other than John Murray! When, in 1818, her husband left her for Italy, leaving her to bring up their five sons, her need for a reliable income became still more pressing.36 (Captain Hemans let it be known that “it was the curse of having a literary wife that he could never get a pair of stockings mended”.) Later she was very popular in the United States. Her works sold well, and she was able to support her family comfortably. She moved eventually from Murray to Blackwood of Edinburgh, whom she hoped would be more generous (he wasn’t). After Byron left England, Murray became his main source of new literature, and among the packages Murray sent were volumes from his own lists. There is no reference to Hemans by Byron outside of his correspondence with Murray, and no titles appear in any of the sales catalogues. The first of her volumes dispatched (to Switzerland, in 1816) was The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, which was published anonymously in May of that year, with a false second edition under the authoress’s name. Byron wrote to Murray from Diodati: Italy or Dalmatia & another summer may or may not set me off again – I have no plans – & am nearly as indifferent what may come – as where I go. I shall take Felicia Hemans’ “restoration &c.” with me – it is a good poem – very. – – – –37

It’s hard not to read this as sarcasm, at the expense of the innocent publisher. The Restoration purports to be about such works as the Laocoön, the Bronze Horses of St Mark, and the Apollo Belvedere, which had been purloined by Napoleon (legally, as clauses in peace treaties) only to be returned to Italy after the Congress of Vienna (in defiance of the earlier treaties). Wellington had written to Castlereagh on the matter in a dispatch from Paris, dated 23rd September 1815, arguing that the artworks must be sent back, or the French would be deprived of an opportunity for instruction: The same feelings which induce the people of France to wish to retain the pictures and statues of other nations would naturally induce other nations to wish, now that success is on

35: This argument includes her America sales, many of which were piracies. 36: Quoted Duncan Wu, Romantic Women Poets, p.489. 37: B. to Murray, September 29th 1816 (text from NLS Ms.43488; BLJ V 105-6).

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The dispatch was published, and Byron had reacted with derision to the idea of the Allies educating the French about anything. He uses Wellington’s phrase “a great moral lesson” over and over again in his poetry and prose: at Ode from the French 77-78; in the Preface to Don Juan VI, VII and VIII; at Don Juan XII 436; and in the Preface to The Vision of Judgement. The reference from Don Juan XII may stand as representative: My Muses do not care a pinch of rosin About what’s called success – or not succeeding – Such thoughts are quite below the strain they’ve chosen 435 ’Tis a “great moral lesson” they are reading ...

The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy would have done nothing to persuade him to change his mind. Brief, vague and high-minded, it tries to impress on the reader the value of the works to Italy, without being able (any more than Wellington can) to give an idea why they’re of value, beyond what Hemans can derive from books – to some descriptions from which, especially of the Laocoön, she refers unguardedly in her notes. In opposition to the need to restore the works is the satanic figure of Napoleon, who removed them in the first place in the interest of his own self-aggrandisement:

38: Wellington, Dispatches, ed. Lieut. Colonel Gurwood, London, John Murray, 1838, vol. XII pp.645-6.

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Nerv’d for the struggle, in that fateful hour, Untamed Ambition summmon’d all his power; Vengeance and Pride, to frenzy rous’d, were there, And the stern might of resolute Despair. Isle of the free! ’twas then thy champions stood, Breasting unmov’d the combat’s wildest flood, Sunbeam of Battle, then thy spirit shone, Glow’d in each breast, and sunk with life alone. 39

It seems unlikely that Byron, whose attitude both to Napoleon and to the “Isle of the free” was quite other than this, would really have valued The Restoration enough to “take it with him” on his travels to “Italy”, still less to “Dalmatia”. Hemans spends thirty-six lines – eighteen heroic couplets (for she chooses that conservative idiom in which to write) on the Horses of St. Mark’s: Proud Racers of the Sun! to fancy’s thought, Burning with spirit, from his essence caught, No mortal birth ye seem – but formed to bear Heaven’s car of triumph through the realms of air … and so on. 40

… without considering that Venice had herself stolen the Horses from Constantinople, during the Fourth Crusade in 1204. Irony is not something she values, or cares to employ, even in heroic couplets. Lofty and patriotic thoughts sell better. Parenthetically, it is impossible to imagine Hemans writing as unrelentingly downbeat and pitiful a poem as Charlotte Dacre’s The Poor Negro Sadi about the dereliction and death of a free slave on the streets of London – another excellent item from Hours of Solitude (vol II pp.117-122) at one in its vision of inhumanity with that of Blake. A year later – in June 1817 – Hemans published Modern Greece, a meditation upon that country in a hundred and one Spenserian stanzas, which she and Murray thought best to put out anonymously. Still stranger feelings must have come over Byron as he read such things as this (it is the forty-fifth stanza): Lo, where th’Albanian spreads his despot sway O’er Thessaly’s rich vales and glowing plains, Whose sons in sullen abjectness obey, Nor lift the hand indignant at its chains: 39: The Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, p.4. 40: Ibid, p.15.

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Byron the Vampire, and the Vampire Women Oh! doth the land that gave Achilles birth, And many a chief of old illustrious line, Yield not one spirit of unconquer’d worth, To kindle those that now in bondage pine? No! on its mountain-air is slavery’s breath, And terror chills the hearts whose utter’d plaints were death.

The manner of Childe Harold is skilfully caught. Hemans is a highly professional pasticheuse. She never travelled abroad, had no personal or political axe to grind in relation to Greece, and her intention was to break into a market which Byron had in great part created. The standard writers about Greece, on whom, as her notes reveal, she has conscientiously relied – Chandler, Potter, Pouqueville, Holland, Mitford – exclude Hobhouse and Byron, though her poem owes much more to Byron than to anyone else. Could Murray have insisted on anonymous publication as a marketing ploy, to fool the public into thinking that another Byron poem was before them?41 It’s possible. If so, he was over-optimistic. Modern Greece – unlike Childe Harold – will upset no-one.42 It’s conventional in its praise of and regret for the Greece that was, in its sentimental nostalgia for the ancient Olympian religion, and in its regret that the Turks don’t appreciate what they now rule: Their glance is cold indifference, and their toil But to destroy what ages have revered, As if exulting sternly to erase Whate’er might prove that land had nurs’d a nobler race. 43

Hemans wouldn’t want to know about the Turkish officer who wept as the Parthenon frieze was taken down by Lord Elgin’s agents.44 For her, Elgin’s deed will fuel England’s future artistic genius: … who can tell how pure, how bright a flame, Caught from these models, may illume the west? 41: Other explanations are the standard anonymity often taken by modest female writers; and the need to save Captain Hemans’ face, for he was humiliated by his wife’s talent and success, having neither himself. 42: For a more positive judgement on Modern Greece, see Byron Raizis’ account in Childe Harold’s Offspring, English and America, in Tessier (ed.), Lord Byron, A Multidisciplinary Open Forum, 1999, pp.44-7. 43: Modern Greece, stanza LXXXVII. 44: St. Clair II, p.103.

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What British Angelo may rise to fame, On the free isle what beams of art may rest? 45

Byron, ignorant of the author’s identity, but at odds with him / her at least on the question of the Elgin Marbles (perhaps annoyed, too, by the way he / she impugned the manners and status of his old chum Ali Pacha, “the Albanian”) was scathing: Paris in 181546 &c. good. – Modern Greece Good for nothing – written by some one who has never been there – and not being able to manage the Spenser Stanza has invented a thing of its’ own – consisting of two elegiac stanzas a heroic line and an Alexandrine twisted on a string – besides why “modern”? – you may say modern Greeks but surely Greece itself is rather more ancient than ever it was. – –.47

The neutral “a thing of it’s own”, may reveal Byron’s suspicion; and his blustery final argument seems cover-up for a deeply-felt affront. His intuition that Hemans’ book is based on nothing but other books is accurate – his own books being principal among them; but Hemans’ technical control of the Spenserian stanza is actually quite as good as his – she’s just a lot less ambitious about the feelings and ideas she expresses within it. When Byron read Modern Greece, Childe Harold was not quite finished. In its fourth canto he gives some space to works of art, including the Laocoön and the Belvedere Apollo, which he, unlike Hemans, who rarely left North Wales, had seen: in a letter he compares the Apollo to Lady Adelaide Forbes (BLJ V 227). As epigraph to The Restoration …, Hemans had placed the first five lines of the famous sonnet by the seventeenth-century Italian poet Vincenzo da Filicaia: Italia, Italia o tu, cui feo la sorte Dono infelice di bellezza, ond’hai Funesta dote d’infiniti guai, Che in fronte scritti per gran doglia porte: Deh! fossi tu men bella, o almen più forte …

45: Modern Greece, stanza XCIX. 46: By the Revd. George Croly (see DJ IX, 57, 6). 47: B. to Murray, September 4th 1817 (text from NLS Ms.43489 f.217; BLJ V 262-3).

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The rest of the sonnet goes Onde assai più ti paventasse, o assai T’amasse men, chi del tuo bello ai rai Par che si strugga, e pur ti sfida a morte. Che giù dall’Alpi non vedrei torrenti Scender d’armati, nè di sangue tinta Bever l’onda del Po Gallici armenti: Nè ti vedrei del non tuo ferro cinta Pugnar col braccio di straniere genti, Per servir sempre, o vincitrice, o vinta. [“… So that much more would he fear you, or much more / love you less, who for your beauty in the rays / seems to pine [[for love]], yet challenges you to death. / Thus I would not see from the Alps torrents / Come down armed, nor tinted with blood / drink the wave of the Po Gallic herds / Nor would I see you dressed not with you own armor / Fight with [[using]] the arm of foreign people, / To serve no matter, winning, or won.” – literal translation by Gabriele Poole.]

I don’t know whether or not Hemans’ epigraph introduced Byron to Filicaia (this may have been done by Madame de Staël). On September 14th 1816 Hobhouse had recorded the Karvellas brothers from Zante as saying … the Greeks report badly of Italy Austrian – Filicaia and Beccaria forbidden books – 48

… which would indicate a degree of familiarity. Byron, whatever he may have thought of The Restoration …, thought highly enough of Filicaia’s banned sonnet to translate and expand it himself, as stanzas 42 and 43 of Childe Harold IV: Italia! oh Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, 48: B.L. Add.Mss. 56536 120r.

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On thy sweet brow is sorrow plough’d by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame. Oh God! that thou wert in thy nakedness Less lovely or more powerful, and could’st claim Thy right, and awe the robbers back, who press To shed thy blood, and drink the tears of thy distress; Then might’st thou more appal; or, less desired, Be homely and be peaceful, undeplored For thy destructive charms; then, still untired, Would not be seen the armed torrents pour’d Down the steep Alps; nor would the hostile horde Of many-nation’d spoilers from the Po Quaff blood and water; nor the stranger’s sword Be thy sad weapon of defence, and so, Victor or vanquish’d, thou the slave of friend or foe. 49

The next year, 1818, in a volume called Translations from Camoens and Other Poets, with Original Poetry, Hemans produced her version of the same poem:

49: Madame de Staël translated the sonnet too, although when is not clear. May her translation, which makes the Italian sonnet sound like the Marseillaise, have drawn B.’s attention to Filicaia in Geneva in 1816? Here it is: ITALIE, Italie, ah! quel destin perfide Te donna la beauté, source de tes malheurs? Ton sein est déchiré par le fer homicide, Tu portes sur ton front l’empreinte des douleurs. Ah! que n’es-tu moins belle, ou que n’est-tu plus forte! Inspire plus de crainte, ou donne moins d’amour. De l’étranger jaloux la perfide cohorte N’a feint de t’adorer que pour t’ôter le jour. Quoi! verra-t-on toujours descendre des montagnes Ces troupeaux de Gaulois, ces soldats effrénés, Qui, du Tibre et du Pô, dans nos tristes campagnes, Boivent l’onde sanglante et les flots enchaînés? Verra-t-on tes enfans, ceints d’armes étrangères, Des autres nations seconder les fureurs; Et, ne marchant jamais sous leurs propres banières, Combattre pour servir, ou vaincus, ou vainqueurs? (Œuvres inédites, de Mme. La Baronne de Staël publiées par son fils, Londres 1821, vol III p.399).

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I don’t know when she did the translation, whether before or after Childe Harold IV appeared on April 18th 1818. But the difference is interesting. Byron, in expanding Filicaia’s sonnet into two Spenserian stanzas, has, in such phrases as “undeplored / For thy destructive charms”, feminised and demonised Italy rather more than Filicaia, and much more than Hemans. As a result his version is more vivid, and his reason for choosing the sonnet – its relevance to Italy’s plight under the Austrians and the Bourbons (“the robbers”) in 1817 – clearer. He passes no comment on the coincidence, though Murray must have sent him a copy of Hemans’ translation volume. Later, in Lays of Many Lands (1825) Hemans published some “Greek songs”, using ideas borrowed from modern French writers on Greece. Her lyrics lack either the irony, or the bucolic qualities, we find in The Isles of Greece from Don Juan. Byron of course never knew them, having died in the Greek cause a year previously. Two more of Hemans’ volumes, Tales and Historic Scenes in Verse and Stanzas to the Memory of the Late King, came out in 1819 and 1820. Byron refers to neither of them. But later in 1820 Murray published The Sceptic, in which Hemans expresses pious warnings to, and pity for, rationalists, who according to her all die in misery. Of it she had written to Gifford

50: Translations from Camoens and Other Poets, with Original Poetry, p.27.

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… it is entirely free from political allusions, and is merely meant as a picture of the dangers resulting to public and private virtue and happiness, from the doctrines of Infidelity …51

To the volume Byron – whose verse was rarely free from political allusions – reacted as if challenged: Mrs. Hemans is a poet also – but too [below address:] stiltified, & apostrophic – & quite wrong. – men died calmly before the Christian æra – & since without Christianity – witness – the Romans – & lately Thistlewood – Sandt – & Louvel – men who ought to have been weighed down with their crimes – even had they believed. – – A deathbed is a matter of nerves & constitution – & not of religion; – Voltaire was frightened – Frederick of Prussia not. – Christians the same according to their strength [text turns through ninety degrees and travels up right-hand side:] rather than their creed. –52

Arthur Thistlewood was one of the Cato Street Conspirators, opposed in politics and religion to everything the “a-political” (that is, the Tory) Hemans’ poetry advertised itself as standing for. Sandt had murdered Kotzebue, and Louvel the duc de Berri. One of several passages in The Sceptic which Byron may be answering is Oh! what is nature’s strength? the vacant eye, By mind deserted, hath a dread reply! The wild delirious laughter of despair, The mirth of frenzy – seek an answer there! Turn not away, tho’ pity’s cheek grow pale, Close not thine eye against their awful tale. They tell thee, reason, wandering from the ray Of Faith, the blazing pillar of her way, In the mid-darkness of the stormy wave, Forsook the struggling soul she could not save! 53

51: Quoted Paula R. Feldman, The Poet and the Profits: Felicia Hemans and the Literary Marketplace, Keats-Shelley Journal XLVI 1997, p.156. 52: B. to Murray, June 7th 1820 (NLS Ms.43490; BLJ VII 113-14). 53: The Sceptic, pp.16-17.

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What did Byron find in such stuff to upset him, or to make him want to acknowledge it, even? An important sub-text to The Sceptic seems to me to be Manfred. Hemans’ opening advertises it clearly enough: When the young Eagle, with exulting eye, Has learn’d to dare the splendour of the sky, And leave the Alps beneath him in his course, To bathe his crest in morn’s empyreal source, Will his free wing, from that majestic height, Descend to follow some wild meteor’s light, Which far below, with evanescent fire, Shines to delude, and dazzles to expire? 54

Note the Augustan balance of the final line: further evidence of Hemans’ expertise in parroting the conservative mode she thinks will sell best, and therefore go down best at 50 Albemarle Street. The passage seems to echo the moment in Manfred I ii when the protagonist – a “wild meteor” if ever there was one – wandering in the Alps, reflects: There is a power upon me which witholds, And makes it my fatality to live, If it be life to wear within myself This barrenness of Spirit, and to be My own Soul’s Sepulchre; for I have ceased To justify my deeds unto myself, The last infirmity of evil. – An Eagle passes. Aye, Thou winged and cloud-clearing Minister! Whose happy flight is highest into heaven! Well mayst thou swoop so near me – I should be Thy prey, and gorge thine Eaglets; thou art gone Where the eye cannot follow thee, but thine Yet pierces downward – onward – or above – With a pervading vision: beautiful – How beautiful is all this visible World! 55

54: Ibid, p.1. 55: Manfred I ii 23-37.

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Hemans’ eagle, being indifferent to human wretchedness, is very close to Byron’s. The difference is that her Sceptic would not acknowledge his own littleness, whereas Manfred is all too happy to acknowledge his. Later on in The Sceptic we find Lord of th’Ascendant! what avails it now, Tho’ bright the laurels wav’d upon thy brow? What, tho’ thy name, thro’ distant empires heard, Bade the heart bound, as doth a battle-word? Was it for this thy still unwearied eye, Kept vigil with the watch-fires of the sky, To make the secret of all ages thine, And commune with majestic thoughts that shine O’er Time’s long shadowy pathway? – hath thy mind Sever’d its lone dominions from mankind, For this to woo their homage? – Thou hast sought All, save the wisdom with salvation fraught, Won every wreath – but that which will not die, Nor aught neglected – save eternity! 56

The passage seems, from its context, to be addressed to Satan, but the third and fourth lines could refer to Napoleon. It is Manfred who “[keeps] vigil with the watch-fires of the sky, / To make the secret of all ages [his]” and Byron was always being confused in the popular mind with his various heroes, Manfred not least among them. Hemans has, from her reading, and with a good instinct for what will make the public shudder, created a universal fall-guy out of Satan / Napoleon / Manfred / Byron, and allows her readers to select whichever one takes their imaginations (compare the Morning Post poem in my previous section). The fact that none of the figures were or are “sceptics” doesn’t bother her at all.57 It comes as no surprise that, two months after the letter previously quoted, we find Byron begging Murray

56: The Sceptic, pp.19-20. 57: She may be misusing The Prisoner of Chillon, too: He, who hath pin’d in dungeons, midst the shade Of such deep night as man for man hath made, Thro’ lingering years; if call’d at length to be, Once more, by nature’s boundless charter, free, Shrinks feebly back, the blaze of noon to shun, Fainting at day, and blasted by the sun! (The Sceptic, pp.14-15)

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In the following month he returns to the fray, alluding again to the secondhand nature of Hemans’ inspiration: I do not despise Mrs. Heman – but if ye knit {blue} stockings instead of {wearing them} it would be better. – You are taken in by that false stilted trashy style {which} is a mixture of all the styles of the day – which are all bombastic (I don’t except my own – no one has done more through negligence to corrupt the language) but it is neither English nor poetry. – – Time will show. –60

By now his jokes, re-sexing, de-sexing or trans-sexing Hemans (compare the bluestocking gag with the words of Hemans’ husband, quoted above) making her “Hewoman” and “Heman”, may convey his sense either that she is a rival or opponent, or even that she is in some way a version of him – writing the kind of poetry that Murray – and Gifford – would love him to write. Perhaps he sees her as a Frankenstein monster which his “negligence” and “corrupt(ion) of the language” has created – so much of her output is parasitical upon his own pre-ottava rima manner. On September 20th 1820 Murray, who had asked him for “a volume of nonsense”, was treated to the following extempore effusion: But on looking again – I perceive that the Species Of “Nonsense” you want must be purely “facetious” – And as that is the case you had best put to press Mr. Sotheby’s tragedies now in MS.S. – – Some Syrian Sally From common=place Gally Or if you prefer the bookmaking of women Take a spick and Span “Sketch” of your feminine He=Man. [small scrawl]61

58: It’s possible that the original was “Turdsworth’s”; “Wo” is in a different ink, and “Tu” pencilled over that. 59: B. to Murray, August 12th 1820 (text from NLS Ms.43490; BLJ VII 158). 60: B. to Murray, September 28th–29th 1820 (text from NLS Ms.43490; BLJ VII 181-2). 61: B. to Murray, September 28th–29th 1820 (text from NLS Ms.43490; BLJ VII 181-2).

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Hemans has ceased to bother Byron. He insists, knowing how much it will hurt Murray, on reading her ersatz earnestness as facetiousness. Further small ironies are found in later letters: I say nothing against your parsons – your Smedleys – and your Crolys – it is all very fine – but pray dispense me from the pleasure, as also from Mrs. Hemans. – – – – – – – – – – Instead of poetry if you will favour me with a few Soda powders – I shall be delighted – but all prose (bating travels and novels not by Scott) – – is welcome especially Scott’s tales of My Landlord & so on. – – – –62 It is doubtful whether the poem [The Irish Avatar] was written by Felicia Hemans for the prize of the Dartmoor Academy – or by {the Revd.} W. L. Bowles with a view to a bishopric – your own great {discernment} will decide between them.63

The joke about Dartmoor refers to Hemans’ poem of that name, published in 1821, which won her fifty guineas from the Royal Society of Literature. Another high-minded poem, it draws a comfortable contrast between Dartmoor’s barbaric past and England’s Christian present, dragging in, en route, Napoleon, French PoWs, and Remorse. Byron, no longer annoyed by the covert dialogue in which she seemed to be engaging him, by now saw Hemans as one among many canting parsonical poets whom the Tory Murray favoured. His answer to the problem she poses lies implicit in the sentence which follows that just quoted above: By last post I sent the “Vision of Judgment by Quevedo Redivivus” – I just piddle a little with these trifles to keep my hand in for the New “English Bards &c.” which I perceive some of your people are in want of – and which I only wait for a short visit to your country to put me in possession of the nonsense of some of your newer ragamuffins – to commence. – I have not sought it – but if I do begin – – it shall go hard – as Shylock says – “but I better the Instruction”. – – –64

62: B. to Murray, from Ravenna, October 12th 1820 (text from B.L.Ashley 4745; BLJ VII 199-202). 63: B. to Murray, October 9th 1821 (text from NLS Ms.43492: BLJ VIII 236-8). 64: Ibid.

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The Vision of Judgement was his riposte to Southey, the greatest canting parsonical poet of them all. But there seems little doubt that Hemans (one of Murray’s “newer ragamuffins”) trailed Southey, in Byron’s demonological race, by only a short head. The problems posed by the publication of The Vision of Judgement were to sever Byron’s relationship with Murray for good.

BYRON’S LEGACY, AND BYRON’S INHERITANCE First published NBSR, 2009

Byron’s principal bequest to Europe was the Byronic hero, that dead-end character who can achieve nothing, because he’s not convinced that he’s really a member of the human race: He knew himself detested, but he knew The hearts that loathed him, crouched and dreaded too. Lone, wild, and strange, he stood alike exempt From all affection and from all contempt …1

Fatally attractive in his gloom, alienation, “Weltschmertz und Skeptizismus”,2 he leads at once to the heroes of Pushkin’s Eastern Tales, later to Pushkin’s satirically-rendered Evgeny Onegin, to the Superfluous Man of nineteenth-century Russian fiction, and to other variants. He leads to Lermontov’s Pechorin, to Musset’s Rolla, and later still to Huysmans’ Des Esseintes – another comic version of him. The comic versions owe little or nothing to Byron’s own wellattested capacity for self-mockery, of which I shall speak later. The “Byronic” original is not funny, and the “Byronic” myth allows no room for the real Byron’s sense of humour. This “Byronic” Hero is seen at his most extreme in such figures as Baudelaire’s Prince, of whom the poet laments that he is: Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très-vieux, Qui, de ses précepteurs méprisant les courbettes, S’ennuie avec ses chiens comme avec d’autres bêtes. Rien ne peut l’égayer, ni gibier, ni faucon, Ni son peuple mourant en face du balcon.3

A paper given to the Missolonghi Byron Society, Saturday 13th October 2007. 1: The Corsair, 269-72. 2: Max Simhart, Lord Byrons Einfluss auf die italienischen Literatur, Leipzig 1909, p.29. 3: Baudelaire, Spleen, ll.2-6.

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The Byronic Hero exists either to be shunned by his fellows, or to be loved hopelessly by a good woman, or to be shot. The lesser literature of the nineteenth-century is strewn with brigands, pirates, alienated intellectuals, disillusioned politicians, and suicidal poets, all deriving from the early heroes of Byron – just as the literary history of the century is strewn with the corpses of writers – Pushkin, Lermontov, Espronceda, Musset – who died early, under the impression that they were imitating him. First- and second-generation Byronism was a misanthropic, nihilistic cul-de-sac. The Russians were completely taken in by it, and loved it. Dostoevsky took it very seriously, and wrote of it: First of all, one shouldn’t use the word ‘Byronist’ as an insult. Byronism, though a momentary phenomenon, was a great, sacred and necessary one in the life of European mankind and, perhaps, in that of the entire human race. Byronism appeared at a moment of dreadful anguish and disillusionment among men. After the ecstatic transports at the new ideals proclaimed at the end of the previous century in France, then the most progressive nation of European mankind, the outcome was very different from what had been expected; this so deceived the faith of man, that there has never perhaps been a sadder moment in the history of Western Europe. The new idols – raised for one moment only – fell not only as a result of political causes, but because of their innate bankruptcy – which was clearly perceived by the wise hearts and progressive minds. The new outcome was not yet in sight; the new valve was not yet opened, and everybody was suffocating under the weight of a former world, which drew itself down over mankind in a most dreadful manner. The old idols lay shattered. At this very moment a great and mighty genius, a passionate poet, appeared. In his melodies there sounded all the anguish mankind felt in those days, its gloomy disillusionment in its mission, and in the ideals which had deceived it. It was a novel, hitherto unheard-of muse, of vengeance and sorrow, cursing and despair. The spirit of Byronism swept mankind as a whole, and everything responded to it. It was precisely as if a valve had been opened: amidst the universal and dull groans – mostly inarticulate – this was a mighty outcry, in which all the cries of mankind

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combined in one chord. How could it not have been felt in Russia, and particularly by so great, ingenious and pioneering a mind as that of Pushkin? – So in those days, no strong mind in Russia, no magnanimous heart, could have avoided Byronism. And not only because of distant compassion for Europe and European mankind, but because precisely at that time in Russia, too, there arose a great many unsolved and tormenting questions, a great many old disillusionments …4

The “new outcome” (“ɧɨɜɵɣ ɢɫɯɨɞ”), to which the slavophile mystic Dostoevsky would have us believe Byronism blinded Europe temporarily, is, he tells us a few lines later, “ɩɪɟɤɥɨɧɟɧɢɟ ɩɟɪɟɞ ɩɪɚɜɞɨɣ ɧɚɪɨɞɚ ɪɭɫɫɤɨɝɨ” – “the worship of the truth of the Russian people”. Now, we have to admit with the hindsight of 2007 that, much as we love the Russian people, the “truth” they embodied or embody has not been of much benefit to anyone, least of all to them:5 perhaps if Dostoevsky had foreseen the story of Russia in the twentieth century he would have seen Byronism in a still more favourable light. Variants of the Byronic hero appear in the nineteenth-century English novel, often as a seducer: George Staunton in The Heart of Midlothian, Steerforth in David Copperfield. Not until the twentieth century did the three great English-language modernists, Eliot, Yeats, and, especially, Joyce, find (in their very different idioms), more to derive from Byron than just sex and alienation. Byron would have been intrigued by this final outcome (imagine him reading Ulysses for the first time), but very amused and / or frustrated indeed by the interim development. For the Byronic Hero and the tales from which he derived – “my Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates”, as he described them6 – constituted a dead-end in his own work: a dead end which, however, received maximum publicity, thanks to its novelty (for, though largely literary in inspiration, it was imagined to be autobiographical), and thanks to the speed with which, via post-Waterloo French prose translations, it was disseminated throughout Europe. But the poems upon which it was based were written carelessly, at high speed. Byron became ashamed of having pandered to what he saw, even as he wrote, as the debased taste of a public with no literary standards:

4: Dostoevsky, Journal for November 1877, ɇȺɍɄ Dostoevsky, XXVI, pp.11314: tr. Boris Brasol as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Journals, The Diary of a Writer, Cassell 1949, p.939 (adapted). 5: I was told at Missolonghi that my estimate of Slavic mysticism was “cynical”. 6: BLJ IV 252-3; letter to Thomas Moore, January 10th 1815.

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Byron’s Legacy, and Byron’s Inheritance They [modern poets] have raised a Mosque by the side of a Grecian temple of the purest Architecture [the legacy of Pope] – and more barbarous than the Barbarians from whose practise I have borrowed the figure – they are not contented with their own grotesque edifice – unless they destroy the prior and beautiful fabric which preceded and shames them & their forever and ever. – – I shall be told that amongst these – I have been – (or it may be still am) conspicuous; – true – and I am ashamed of it; – I have been among the builders of this Babel attended by a confusion of tongues – but never amongst the envious destroyers of the classic temple of our Predecessor. I have loved and honoured the fame and name of that illustrious and unrivalled man – far more than my own paltry renown.7

When Byron found his real forte as a writer – in 1817, with Beppo – the earlier “Byron” had taken too strong a hold on the imagination of the world to be shaken off. Byron’s own inability to relinquish the idiom completely, as, for example, in the figure of Fletcher Christian in The Island, a poem written for a readership to whose low appetite Byron was pandering, did not help. We could discuss endlessly who was to blame for “Byronism” and “the Byronic hero”: ultimately, however, it was Byron himself. —————————— When we look at what Byron inherited via his haphazard but capacious reading from the European tradition, we find that the ingredients which make “Byronism” and “the Byronic Hero” make up only a small fragment of it. Two of his favourite writers were the eighteenth-century rationalists Voltaire and Pierre Bayle, without whose voluminous complete works he felt almost unable to travel.8 In them he would have found much material for the scepticism which marks his poems and plays about religion (not a subject about which the Byronic Hero, irreligious though he may appear, thinks rationally at all). The following thought from Bayle’s Dictionary, about God the Father, goes straight into Cain: This is to compare the Deity to a Father who should suffer his Children to break their legs on purpose to show his City his great Art in setting their Broken Bones; or to a King who should suffer Seditions and Factions to encrease thro’ all his 7: Letter to John Murray Esquire; CMP 148-9. 8: See BLJ VIII 238; letter to John Murray, October 9th 1821.

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Kingdom, that he might purchase the Glory of quelling them. The Conduct of this Father and Monarch is so contrary to the clear and distinct ideas, according to which we judge of Goodness and Wisdom, and in general of the whole Duty of a Father and a King, that our Reason cannot conceive how God can make use of the same.9

This becomes, Cain:

Lucifer: Cain:

I lately saw A lamb stung by a reptile: the poor suckling Lay foaming on the earth, beneath the vain And piteous bleating of its restless dam; My father plucked some herbs, and laid them to The wound; and by degrees the helpless wretch Resumed its careless life, and rose to drain The mother’s milk, who o’er it tremulous Stood licking its reviving limbs with joy. Behold, my son! said Adam, how from Evil Springs Good! What didst thou answer? Nothing; for He is my father: but I thought, that ‘twere A better portion for the animal Never to have been stung at all than to Purchase renewal of its little life With agonies unutterable, though Dispelled by antidotes.10

Eighteenth-century scepticism was only one thread of Byron’s reading. While writing the Turkish Tales, from which “Byronism” sprang, he made a thorough study of the Italian epic verse tradition. Between 1813 and 181611 he bought two complete copies of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso,12 three copies of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata,13 plus at least two copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy,14 and assisted himself by learning Italian 9: Bayle’s Dictionary, 1710 English translation, IV 2488: chapter on Paulicians, nE: compare Cain, II ii 289-305. 10: B., Cain, II ii 289-305. 11: B.’s library sale catalogues will be found at . 12: 1816 catalogue, 28 and 29. 13: 1816, 310, 311: one an 1813 set. 14: 1816, 93, 310, 311.

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systematically.15 He also bought Black’s Life of Tasso,16 a thirteen-volume Machiavelli,17 and Goldoni’s Memoirs.18 To get it all in perspective he bought an 1813 edition of Sismondi’s de la Littérature du Midi.19 Much of this research and reading gets into Don Juan. Thus, simultaneously with sowing the seeds of “Byronism” via The Corsair, Lara, and so on, he was preparing himself for “Byronism’s” antidote. The Siege Cantos of Don Juan – in which a Christian army besieges and sacks an Islamic town – have as models similar sieges and sacks in the Morgante Maggiore, the Orlando Furioso, and the Gerusalemme Liberata. When Ariosto recounts the aftermath of a successful siege, in which a Christian army captures the Islamic city of Bizerta in North Africa, he lets slip, in his honesty, some details at which Byron would have nodded grimly: con quel furor l’impetuosa gente, là dove avea in più parti il muro rotto, entrò col ferro e con la face ardente a distruggere il popul mal condotto. Omicidio, rapina e man violente nel sangue e ne l’aver, trasse di botto la ricca e trionfal città a ruina, che fu di tutta l’Africa regina.20 [Such was the violence of the impetuous host as it surged through the gaps in the walls into the city to destroy the ill-captained Saracens with fire and sword. Murder, robbery and violence done to life and property hastened the downfall of the rich, triumphant city which had once been queen of all Africa.]

When Byron has a siege in Don Juan, he chooses, from the many that had occurred in the years since he’d been born, a horrible but not very famous one from the Turkish Wars of Catherine the Great. Surely he did so because it was one of the few modern examples of a Christian army besieging a Moslem town, as in Ariosto: But let me put an end unto my theme – There was an end of Ismail – hapless town! Far flashed her burning towers o’er Danube’s stream, 15: See 1816, 19 and 53. 16: 1816, 147. 17: 1816, 239. 18: 1816, 240. 19: 1816, 292. 20: Ariosto, Orlando Furioso 40, st.32

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And redly ran his blushing waters down; The horrid War-whoop and the shriller Scream Rose still; but fainter were the thunders grown; Of forty thousand who had manned her wall, Some hundreds breathed – the rest were silent all!21

These and other important themes in Byron’s work form no part of nineteenth-century “Byronism”. What Byron expressed in his best poetry is the opposite of what his immediate readership, and the readership of the nineteenth century, claimed it had discovered. This readership perceived Don Juan as a regrettable aberration. —————————— To examine further what Byron valued most in his reading, I want to examine, not his poems and plays, nor his library sales catalogues, but the commonest quotations and references in his letters. Here, in his private communications, we surely find which books meant most to him, even though in his literary output we may not find many traces of them. The question I wish to ask is, with which characters from fiction did he most empathise? Where did he find the figures which reminded him most of himself? I find three books being referred to over and over again by Byron in his letters: they are Shakespeare’s Henry IV part I, Sheridan’s The Critic, and the novel Gil Blas, by Alain René le Sage. At Don Juan I, 125, Byron writes, Sweet is a legacy, and passing sweet The unexpected death of some old Lady Or Gentleman of seventy years complete, Who’ve made “us youth” wait too – too long already For an estate, or cash, or country-seat …

It’s a reference to his mother-in-law, Lady Noel, from whose death he expects to benefit (she was still alive when Don Juan I was published). The two-word phrase “us youth” is Byron’s favourite Shakespearean quotation; it occurs more often in his letters than any other,22 and is part of Falstaff’s cry (They hate us youth!) as he ambushes the travellers on Gad’s Hill, at Henry IV i II ii 85. The irony is (i) against Falstaff, who is no 21: B., Don Juan VIII, st.123. 22: See BLJ III 15, 160, 161, 250, IV 115, VI 60, 200, and VII 231.

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youth, and (ii) against Byron, who is no youth either: losing his youth was a fate which he did not anticipate with pleasure, and, like Falstaff, he joked about it to cover his gloom: Falstaff: You that are old consider not the capacities of us that are young; you do measure the heat of our livers with the bitterness of your galls: and we that are in the vaward of our youth, I must confess, are wags too. Lord Chief Justice: Do you set down your name in the scroll of youth, that are written down old with all the characters of age? Have you not a moist eye? a dry hand? A yellow cheek? a white beard? a decreasing leg? An increasing belly? is not your voice broken? Your wind short? your chin double? your wit single? And every part about you blasted with antiquity? And will you yet call yourself young? Fie, fie, fie, Sir John! Falstaff: My lord, I was born about three of the clock in the afternoon, with a white head and something a round belly. For my voice, I have lost it with halloing and singing of anthems.23

A doomed, Byronic version of Falstaff can be sensed subtextually beneath much of Don Juan. Byron often identifies with the heroic, tragic figures of Macbeth and Coriolanus; but it’s the comic, overweight, almostover-the-hill Sir John Falstaff who, from the Shakespearean gallery, means most to him in terms of his private self-image. Falstaff is of course famous for being fraudulent through and through (it’s because he’s so openly mendacious and fake that we love him so much). A more neurotically fraudulent character is the fifth-rate playwright Sir Fretful Plagiary in Act I of The Critic, by Byron’s drunken friend Sheridan. Where Falstaff revels openly in his mendacity, Sir Fretful pretends all the time to be sincere. He demands honest criticism of his plays, but when he gets it he can’t accept it, and ascribes it to bad motives: Sir Fretful: I say nothing – I take away from no man’s merit – am hurt at no man’s good fortune – I say nothing. – But this I will say – through all my knowledge of life, I have observed – that there is not a passion so strongly rooted in the human heart as envy!24

His two-facedness invites ridicule, which he receives in abundance – and from those who claim to be his friends. By the end of the scene, he has been goaded into a kind of self-realisation:

23: Shakespeare, Henry IV II 166-78. 24: Sheridan, The Critic, I i.

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Dangle: A severe rogue! ha! ha! ha! But you are quite right, Sir Fretful, never to read such nonsense. Sir Fretful: To be sure – for if there is anything to one’s praise, it is a foolish vanity to be gratified at it; and, if it is abuse – why one is always sure to hear of it from one damned goodnatured friend or other! … let me tell you, if you continue to believe this, you must mean to insult me, gentlemen – and, then, your disrespect will affect me no more than the newspaper criticisms – and I shall treat it with exactly the same calm indifference and philosophic contempt – and so your servant. (Exit.)25

This sad character seems to have got under Byron’s skin like few others. When in the Preface to Marino Faliero, he writes, “Were I capable of writing a play which could be deemed stageworthy, success would give me no pleasure, and failure great pain”,26 he is echoing Sir Fretful. And he is always quoting him in letters. On May 5th 1810 he writes: “My friend H. is naturally anxious on the head of his rhymes … but he has not yet acquired the ‘calm indifference’ (as Sir Fretful has it), of us old Authors”.27 On June 12th 1813, he writes about a book called “Strictures on Lord Byron”: “I may enjoy it like Sir Fretful or the Archbishop of Granada”.28 On August 22nd 1813, he quotes Sir Fretful again: “Mr Jeffrey (or his deputy) ‘has done the handsome thing by me,’ and I say nothing. But this I will say …”29 On September 18th 1815 he writes, “one thing you may be sure of – if there is any thing bad you will always as Sheridan says ‘find some damned good natured friend or other to tell it you’”.30 Faced with criticism, it pleases him to take Sir Fretful as his model of deportment. “The Archbishop of Granada”, whom Byron associates with Sir Fretful, is from le Sage’s picaresque novel Gil Blas (1715-35). One episode from this book made such an impact on Byron that he returns to it

25: Ibid. 26: B., Preface to Marino Faliero (1820). 27: BLJ I 241, letter to Francis Hodgson, May 5th 1810: see also IV 50 and 51. 28: BLJ III 61; letter to John Murray. 29: BLJ III 94; letter to John Murray: see also V 198, and Beppo, 96, 5. “done the handsome thing by me” is from Smollet’s Humphrey Clinker. 30: BLJ IV 313; letter to James Wedderburn Webster: see also IV 78, VI 107, X 141.

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nine times in his correspondence.31 In the seventh book, Gil Blas becomes secretary to the Archbishop of Granada, who is struck by his fine taste in letters. The Archbishop is old, and commands that, when his sermons begin to lose their quality, Gil, whose frankness he values, should tell him so at once. The time comes when, after an apoplexy, it’s clear that his touch has gone, and Gil tells him so: but the Archbishop’s reaction is not a humble one: “I were unfit to live in a Christian land!” interrupted he, with stammering impatience; “I were unfit to live in a Christian land if I liked you the less for such a Christian virtue as sincerity. A man who does not love sincerity sets his face against the distinguishing mark between a friend and a flatterer. I should have given you infinite credit for speaking what you thought, if you had thought anything that deserved to be spoken. I have been finely taken in by your outside shew of cleverness, without any solid foundation of sober judgment!” Though completely unhorsed, and at the enemy’s mercy, I wanted to make terms of decent capitulation, and to go unmolested into winter quarters: but let those who think to appease an exasperated author, and especially an author whose ear has been long attuned to the music of his own praises, take warning by my fate. “Let us talk no more on the subject, my very young friend,” said he. “You are as yet scarcely in the rudiments of good taste, and utterly incompetent to distinguish between gold and tinsel. You are yet to learn that I never in all my life composed a finer homily than that unfortunate one which had not the honour of your approbation. The immortal part of me, by the blessing of heaven on me and my congregation, is less weighed down by human infirmity than when the flesh was stronger. We all grow wiser as we grow older, and I shall in future select the people about me with more caution; nor submit the castigation of my works but to a much abler critic than yourself. Get about your business!” pursued he, giving me an angry shove by the shoulders out of his closet; “go and tell my treasurer to pay you a hundred ducats, and take my priestly blessing in addition to that sum. God speed you, good Master Gil Blas! I heartily pray that you may do well in the world! There is

31: See BLJ I 111 (to William Bankes); II 63 (to William Miller); III 61, V 211, VI 61, VII 168, and VIII 88 (all to Murray); VI 212 (to Hobhouse); and XI 125 (to Moore).

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nothing to stand in your way, but the want of a little better taste.”32

On each occasion in his letters, Byron takes on the role either of the Archbishop, or of Sir Fretful: that is, of one who needs criticism, asks for it, but is unable to take it when it comes. Sir John Falstaff, Sir Fretful Plagiary, and the Archbishop of Granada. These characters do not at first seem at all like Conrad, Lara, or Childe Harold – still less like Evgeny Onegin, or Pechorin, A Hero of Our Time. But are they really so unlike? I believe not. They all have one dreadful problem in common: all exist beyond the pale of human discourse, and have to be rejected. Falstaff, the consummate liar, believes in a fantasyfuture in which he will become the most powerful man in the country: his disillusion kills him. Sir Fretful leaves the stage in humiliation at the end of Act I, and has no further part in the pageant. Obviously the Archbishop remains in his pulpit; but we can see he has no future there – perhaps another apoplexy will carry him off in mid-sermon. That Byron should – in the spontaneity of his private letters – identify himself with such men, shows a sense of humour, a humility, an acknowledgement of his common fallibility and humanity, which is absent from the supposed self-depictions in his “Byronic” verse. It has a worrying undercurrent, however, in line with the selfdeprecation we find here: But I am but a nameless sort of person (A broken Dandy lately on my travels) And take for Rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on, The first that Walker’s Lexicon unravels, And when I can’t find that, I put a worse on, Not caring as I ought for Critics’ cavils; I’ve half a mind to tumble down to prose, But Verse is more in fashion – so here goes!33

Once he left England, though fame pursued him, a “rambling”, “tumbling”, “nameless” “broken Dandy” was what, in effect, he became. He was as alienated from his social context as Falstaff, Sir Fretful, and the Archbishop were in their idioms – or as Lara, Harold, or the Giaour were in theirs. The only difference was that – unlike the paranoid Sir Fretful or the hypersensitive Archbishop – he really did care “[n]ought for Critics’ 32: Gil Blas, VII, 4; translation by Tobias Smollett. 33: Beppo, st.52.

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cavils”. Had he done so, Don Juan would have stopped at the second canto; and Don Juan drove an even greater wedge between himself and his old friends in England. Only in his death, here in Missolonghi, did he attain – perhaps – a measure of oneness with the world.

BYRON AND HIS WILL’O’TH’WISPS First published NBSR, 2009

“Poor Byron,” sighed Phyllis Grosskurth, “never really knew what he wanted from life”.1 The maternal concern may have been ill-judged, but it does contain some truth: Byron was obsessed with the image of the ignis fatuus – the will’o’th’wisp – the perpetual promise of something worth having in life which never delivers, the light which hovers before you but always recedes, the seeming way out which is in reality a cul-de-sac – or worse. I often think that the ignis fatuus is an excellent metaphor for studying Byron. Some ignes fatui are delightful, and you don’t mind dying in their pursuit: A peasant girl commended by a Song, Who’d lived somewhere upon that rocky place, And praised the colour of her face, And had the greater joy in praising her, Remembering that, if walked she there, Farmers jostled at the fair So great a glory did the song confer. And certain men, being maddened by those rhymes, Or else by toasting her a score of times, Rose from the table and declared it right To test their fancy by their sight; But they mistook the brightness of the moon For the prosaic light of day – Music had driven their wits astray – And one was drowned in the great bog of Cloone.2

Other ignes fatui are horrible:

A paper given at the International Byron Conference, St Andrews, 2008. 1: Phyllis Grosskurth, Byron The Flawed Angel (Hodder and Stoughton 1997), p.438. 2: Yeats, The Tower, II 17-32.

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Byron and his Will’o’th’wisps [The doorkeeper often questions him, asking about where he’s from and many other things, but these are disinterested questions such as great men ask, and he always ends up by telling him he still can’t let him in. The man had come well equipped for his journey, and uses everything, however valuable, to bribe the doorkeeper. He accepts everything, but as he does so he says, “I’ll only accept this so that you don’t think there’s anything you’ve failed to do”.] Over many years, the man watches the doorkeeper almost without a break. [He forgets about the other doormen, and begins to think this one is the only thing stopping him from gaining access to the law. Over the first few years he curses his unhappy condition out loud, but later, as he becomes old, he just grumbles to himself.] He becomes senile, and as he has come to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper’s fur collar over the years that he has been studying him he even asks them to help him and change the doorkeeper’s mind. Finally his eyes grow dim, and he no longer knows whether it’s really getting darker or just his eyes that are deceiving him. But he seems now to see an inextinguishable light begin to shine from the darkness behind the door. He doesn’t have long to live now. Just before he dies, he brings together all his experience from all this time into one question which he has still never put to the doorkeeper. He beckons to him, as he’s no longer able to raise his stiff body. The doorkeeper has to bend over deeply as the difference in their sizes has changed very much to the disadvantage of the man. “What is it you want to know now?” asks the doorkeeper, “You’re insatiable.” “Everyone wants access to the law,’ says the man, “how come, over all these years, no-one but me has asked to be let in?” The doorkeeper can see the man’s come to his end, his hearing has faded, and so, so that he can be heard, he shouts to him: “Nobody else could have got in this way, as this entrance was meant only for you. Now I’ll go and close it”.3

Byron would have found a very strange nautical example in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner: About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch’s oils, Burnt green, and blue and white.4 3: Kafka, The Trial, tr. David Wyllie; text from http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext05/ktria11.txt. 4: Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, ll.126-30.

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… though there the phenomenon exists neither to lead nor to mislead, but to merely to dance a grim commentary on the action. Byron’s life can be analysed as his following one will’o’the’wisp after another: attending on door after door in the hope that each will open just for him. Boyhood affection – getting laid in Greece – literary fame in London – political success in Italy – a glorious death in Greece – we could list them endlessly. In one letter, he even confuses the will’o’th’wisp with its fated follower. On September 13th 1812 he writes to Lady Melbourne: … so do not you go to Ireland or I shall follow you oer “flood and fen” a complete Ignis fatuus –

… but he suddenly realises that that’s wrong – it’s not the ignis fatuus which follows, but which is followed. He hems: … that is I the epithet will not apply to you,

… but it still doesn’t work: if Lady Melbourne is not the ignis fatuus, what is she – and what is he? He rewrites the metaphor, inverting it without acknowledging having done so: … so we will divide the expression you would be the light & I the fool …5

It’s an excellent Freudian slip, reflecting the often confused binary reality. As you would expect, Byron’s antithetical, prismatic, endlessly selfcontradictory way of seeing the world causes him to use the image of the will’o’the’wisp in a large number of contexts, normally in such a way as to make a pessimistic point.6 His ignes fatuii are never jolly, like that of Yeats, quoted above. First, romantic love is an ignis fatuus: here is the early poem To a Young Friend: But say, what nymph will prize the flame Which seems, as marshy vapours move, 5: BLJ II 195. 6: It would be pleasant to report that he used the Aurora Borealis in an opposite context; but apart from the heroine of Don Juan’s last cantos (perhaps a big exception – we can’t tell), he uses it much less often: see Don Juan VII st.2; TVOJ st.27; or Beppo st.84.

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To flit along from dame to dame, An ignis-fatuus gleam of love? (To a Young Friend, st.17)

Later in life (fortified, perhaps, by experience), he wasn’t averse to making jokes about Teresa Guccioli’s love for him, using the ignis fatuus as a metaphor. From Ravenna, July 13th 1820 he wrote to Moore: He [Alessandro Guiccioli] swore that he thought our intercourse was purely amicable, and that I was more partial to him than to her, till melancholy testimony proved the contrary. To this they answer, that ‘Will of this wisp’ was not an unknown person, and that ‘clamosa Fama’ had not proclaimed the purity of my morals;—that her brother, a year ago, wrote from Rome to warn him that his wife would infallibly be led astray by this ignis fatuus, unless he took proper measures, all of which he neglected to take, &c. &c.7

Notice that it’s other people who, in Byron’s version, employ the metaphor: but surely, he’s paraphrasing them creatively – the will’o’the’wisp idea doesn’t convey the way either the gossips, or Pietro Gamba, really expressed themselves, but is the way Byron would have expressed himself, had he been in their shoes. The image was useful to Byron elsewhere, as it was to Coleridge, in establishing atmospheres of gloom and suffering. In Manfred, he uses it as a detail to create a brooding nightscape: When the moon is on the wave, And the glow-worm in the grass, And the meteor on the grave, And the wisp on the morass; When the falling stars are shooting, And the answered owls are hooting, And the silent leaves are still In the shadow of the hill, Shall my soul be upon thine, With a power, and with a sign. (Manfred, I i 192-201)

So even your moral conscience – if that is indeed what Manfred’s voices constitute – may be an ignis fatuus. In The Prisoner of Chillon, the light comes into the Prisoner’s cell like an unwilling emanation from a marsh, an ignited flame unwillingly come 7: BLJ VII 125-7.

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out of a swamp. The way it “creeps” emphasises the darkness of the Prisoner’s universe, from whence light and life are normally excluded: There are seven pillars of Gothic mold In Chillon’s dungeons deep and old; There are seven columns massy and grey, Dim with a dull imprisoned ray, A Sunbeam which hath lost its way; And through the Crevice and the cleft Of the thick wall is fallen and left, Creeping o’er the floor so damp, Like a Marsh’s meteor lamp … (The Prisoner of Chillon, ll.27-35)

Mazeppa, tied to the back of his horse, does not see an ignis fatuus, though such is his discomfort, pain and misery that even a mendacious, treacherous one, would be welcome: No twinkling taper from afar – Stood like a hospitable Star – Not even an ignis fatuus rose To make him merry with my Woes – That very cheat had cheered me then, Although detected, welcome still, Reminding me, through every ill, Of the abodes of men – (Mazeppa, ll.617-24)

In the ottava rima poems, Byron changes tack, and describes some of his characters as ignes fatui: in Don Juan VII, Suvorov / Suwarrow, the Russian general, is an ignis fatuus to his troops: But to the tale: Great Joy unto the Camp! To Russian, Tartar, English, French, Cossacque, O’er whom Souwarrow shone like a Gas lamp, Presaging a most luminous attack; Or like a Wisp along the marsh so damp, Which leads beholders on a boggy walk, He flitted to and fro, a dancing light, Which all who saw it followed – wrong or right. (Don Juan VII, st.46)

(One is reminded here of The Dong with the Luminous Nose). To make a person into a misleader and mass-killer of his kind by comparing him to a

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will’o’the’wisp is a very pessimistic, though realistic, idea: did Byron ever consider Napoleon as one? In Don Juan VIII, Juan wanders through the carnage of Ismael like one following an ignis fatuus: in the absence of his general, he follows his instinct, which leads him, just as surely as Suvorov would, to a place of death: Perceiving nor Commander nor commanded And left at large, like a young heir, to make His way to – where he knew not – single handed; As travellers follow over bog and brake An “Ignis fatuus”; or as sailors stranded Unto the nearest hut themselves betake; So Juan, following Honour and his Nose, Rushed where the thickest fire announced most foes. (Don Juan VIII, st.32)

In The Vision of Judgement, to our amazement, Robert Southey, Byron’s most-hated person (apart from Lady Byron), becomes an ignis fatuus, to mislead, we presume, those few who bother to read him: He first sunk to the bottom, like his works, But soon rose to the surface, like himself, For all Corrupted things are buoyed like Corks, By their own rottenness – light as an Elf, Or Wisp that flits o’er a Morass – he lurks It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf In his own den, to scrawl some “Life” or “Vision” – As Wellborn says, “the Devil turned Precisian.” – (The Vision of Judgement, st.105)

A deeper and less amusing usage occurs in Don Juan XV: It was not envy – Adeline had none – Her place was far beyond it, and her Mind; It was not Scorn – which could not light on one Whose greatest fault was leaving few to find; It was not Jealousy – I think – but shun Following these “Ignes fatui” of Mankind; It was not – but ‘tis easier far, alas! To say what it was not – than what it was. (Don Juan XV, st.54)

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To delve for motivation in a woman is, Byron implies, as futile as following a marsh-light – though he concedes that no other lead or labyrinthine clue will get you results any better. In The Deformed Transformed, he actually brings an ignis fatuus on to the stage, and it is the ignis fatuus which – as it seems – creates the play’s most important metamorphosis, that of putting The Stranger into the body of Arnold: Stranger:

Fire! assist me to renew Life in what lies in my view Stiff and cold! His resurrection rests with me and you! One little, marshy spark of flame – And he again shall seem the same; But I his Spirit’s place shall hold!

An ignis-fatuus flits through the wood and rests on the brow of the body. The Stranger disappears: the body rises. Arnold (in his new form): Oh! horrible! Stranger (in Arnold’s late shape): What! tremblest thou? Arnold: Not so – I merely shudder. Where is fled the shape Thou lately worest? Stranger: To the world of shadows. But let us thread the present. Whither wilt thou? (The Deformed Transformed, I i 474-84)

“Let us thread the present” – like Theseus, we all need a thread, a labyrinthine clue to guide us through life: it’s just that some have a better instinct to distinguish reliable threads from treacherous ones. Were Arnold sharper, he might suspect, from the spectral instrument used to re-animate his old self, that the thread offered him by the Stranger is a treacherous one, and that the outcome will not be good. In Act III scene i of The Two Foscari, Byron uses a variant of the idea on the ignis fatuus, namely the strange mental illness called Calenture, whereby deranged sailors imagine the sea to be a green field from their homeland, and jump into it.8 Jacopo Foscari speaks in his cell beneath the Doge’s Palace:

8: See also Don Juan XVI st.46.

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Marina: Jacopo:

I would have given some tears to my late country And many thoughts; but afterwards addressed Myself, with those about me, to create A new home and fresh state: perhaps I could Have borne this – though I know not. It was the lot of millions, and must be The fate of myriads more. Aye – we but hear Of the survivors’ toil in their new lands, Their numbers and success; but who can number The hearts which broke in silence at that parting, Or after their departure; of that malady Which calls up green and native fields to view From the rough deep, with such identity To the poor exile’s fevered eye, that he Can scarcely be restrained from treading them? (The Two Foscari, III i 162-76)

It’s Jacopo’s way of conveying the maniacally-fixated love he has for the Venice which is torturing and destroying him – the love of any alternative country would, he asserts, be a delusion: though in fact, we can see, his love for Venice is a delusion. Venice is itself an ignis fatuus to those whose love for it is excessive. In Werner, Gabor soliloquises in the secret passage: I will on, And be it where it may – I have my dagger, Which may protect me at a pinch. Burn still, Thou little light! Thou art my ignis fatuus! My stationary will o’ the wisp! So! so! He hears my invocation, and fails not. (Werner, III iii 37-42)

Here Byron, antithetical as ever, reverses the usual meaning of his favourite image: for what Gabor finds that his “little light” is leading him to is a glimpse of Ulric, washing his hands after the murder of Strahlenheim. He jokes about it defensively, calling it an ignis fatuus before the event: but in fact it is leading him to something useful (useful to him, that is – not to either Ulric or to Werner). The Island shows at last an ironic, and perhaps happy, usage of the topos. Torquil and Neuha disappear into the sea, and Torquil’s comrades can’t see what’s happened to him. Byron here employs a variant on the idea of the marsh-light, namely, the grave-light:

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The quiet Proa wavering o’er the tide Was all that told of Torquil and his bride; And but for this alone the whole might seem The vanished phantom of a seaman’s dream. They paused and searched in vain, then pulled away; Even Superstition now forbade their stay. Some said he had not plunged into the Wave, But vanished like a corpse-light from a grave; Others, that something supernatural Glared in his figure, more than mortal tall; While all agreed that in his cheek and eye There was the dead hue of Eternity. (The Island, IV, 79-90)

The joke is at last on the superstitious. It is neither Torquil nor Neuha who imagine the ignis fatuus, but those who can’t see them and would make them into a myth – a myth such as the inhabitants of Chandrapore make from the death of “Esmiss Esmoor” in A Passage to India – a myth such as generations of “Byronists” have made of Byron. Torquil and Neuha need no will’o’the’wisp to lead them on – their love, their instincts, and Neuha’s local knowledge and natatorial skills, provide them with a happy ending which none of the previous victims of the ignis fatuus can hope for. Neither of Byron’s most famous protagonists have any guide, spectral, marshy, or otherwise, to lead them on. Childe Harold’s pilgrimage has no religious shrine, but the all-encompassing Ocean, as its termination. Don Juan is propelled by the force of circumstance on a tour of Europe with not even a John Murray guidebook, let alone anything as tantalising as an ignis fatuus, to give his journey shape and meaning. ————— I find it a bit eerie that there seems no consensus among scientists as to what a will’o’the’wisp really is. Whether, as used over and over by Byron, it’s amusing or serious, depends on your temperament.

BYRON AND SCOTLAND First published NBSR, 2003

Byron is thought of as an “English” poet, but “Anglo-Scots” is more accurate. Born in London, he was at the age of one removed from the capital by his mother, Catherine Gordon of Gight, who was descended from the fifteenth-century kings of Scotland. She took him back to Aberdeen, where he was educated at the grammar school. Mother and son stayed there for ten years. It was the headmaster of the school who had the pleasant job, late in May 1798, of announcing to young Byron that, his great-uncle having died, the boy was heir to the Rochdale baronetcy, and was now a Lord. Moving south in August 1798, Byron never returned to Scotland, but the country influenced him in many ways – throughout his life people noted his faint Scots accent. It has been claimed that his aggressive satirical voice is from the Scots “flyting” tradition, and that some of his rhymes, especially in Don Juan, his masterpiece, can only work if pronounced à la manière écossaise. He associated Scotland with things both disagreeable and agreeable, as his distance from it increased both in geography and time, and as his sense of it as a real location was replaced by a nostalgic myth of it as a place of rough simplicity and robust innocence. The myth is visible in two of his earliest published works, the poem Lachin Y Gair, and the song “When I roved, a young Highlander”: I arose with the dawn, with my dog as my guide, From mountain to mountain I bounded along, I breasted the billows of Dee’s rushing tide, And heard, at a distance, the Highlander’s song … and so on. (ll.17-20)

In fact Byron associated Scotland with predestination, sex, and hypocrisy. He writes of Aberdeen Grammar that he was ‘early disgusted with a Calvinistic Scotch school where I was cudgelled to Church for the first ten years of my life’.1 And, when he was nine, his Scots nurse May An altered version of Byron et l’Ecosse, which appeared, translated by Gérard Augustin, in Digraphe, Printemps- Été 1999, pp.59-64.

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Gray, from whose lips he was used during the daytime to hear the Bible read, would, as was later reported, “come to bed to him & play tricks with his person”.2 The sexual experience made him precociously aware of women, and made him both susceptible to, and suspicious of, the concept of predestined guilt, a theme which often surfaces in his poetry – in The Giaour, for instance. He next associated the country with harsh criticism of his literary work. In January 1808 his first book, Hours of Idleness, was reviewed in the influential Whig journal The Edinburgh Review. The reviewer, quoting Horace’s Ars Poetica, wrote “The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor men are said to permit”. 3 For much of the rest of his life Byron bore a grudge against this writer, whom he presumed, inaccurately, to be the Review’s famous editor, the Edinburgh advocate Francis Jeffrey; and the satire he published just before he left on his first journey to Greece, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, was a result. In it Jeffrey is mocked for his part in a duel which he failed to fight with the Irish poet Thomas Moore – later a friend of Byron. In the following lines, “Caledonia’s Goddess” speaks to her darling, Jeffrey, whose life she has saved by removing the bullets from both his pistol, and that of his Irish enemy: “My son,” she cried, “ne’er thirst for gore again, Resign thy pistol, and resume the pen; O’er politics and poesy preside, Boast of thy country, and Britannia’s guide! For long as Albion’s heedless sons submit, Or Scottish taste decides on English wit, So long shall last thine unmolested reign, Nor any dare to take thy name in vain. Behold a chosen band shall aid thy plan, And own thee chieftain of the critic clan.” (EBSR ll.498-508)

The idea of Scots taste governing English reading is one Byron finds monstrous – especially if it involves a devaluation of his own poems. In Greece in 1810 and 1811 Byron encountered more evidence of Scots villainy, when he saw the damage which the Scots peer Lord Elgin had done to the Parthenon, in removing the friezes. Byron wrote The Curse of Minerva in response, penning some of the most vitriolic anti-Scots lines ever:

1: BLJ III 64. 2: Marchand 57. 3: Edinburgh Review, January 1808, p.285.

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… well I know within that bastard land Hath Wisdom’s goddess never held command: A barren soil where Nature’s germs confin’d To stern sterility can stint the mind, Whose thistle well betrays the niggard earth, Emblem of all to whom the land gives birth; Each genial influence nurtur’d to resist, A land of meanness, sophistry and mist: Each breeze from foggy mount and marshy plain Dilutes with drivel every drizzly brain, Till burst at length each watery head o’erflows, Foul as their soil and frigid as their snows: Then thousand schemes of petulance and pride Dispatch her scheming children far and wide, Some East, some West, some every where but North, In quest of lawless gain they issue forth. And thus, accursed be the day and year! She sent a Pict to play the felon here. (The Curse of Minerva, ll.131-48)

However, when he returned to England, his wrath cooled, and when, with the publication of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, he became the second most famous man in Europe, he was anxious to put all his anger, both antiEnglish and anti-Scots, behind him. He only published The Curse of Minerva privately and anonymously, and expressed regret at English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. He then wrote nothing about Scotland for some time. This was partly because of the hugely successful sequence of Scots novels which, from 1814 onwards, flowed from the pen, at first anonymous, of Sir Walter Scott. Starting with Waverley, a novel set at the time of the 1745 Jacobite insurrection, the books gave Scotland a new profile for the international reading public. Byron adored the Waverley novels, read them all as they came out, and studded his letters with quotations from them. ‘I never move without them’ he wrote. 4 A year after Waverley was published he wrote a short poem celebrating the death of a Scots hero Culloden. The poem – which Byron did not publish – is named after its hero, Golice Macbane.5 Here are two verses: With thy back to the wall, and thy breast to the targe, Full flashed thy claymore in the face of thy charge;

4: BLJ IX 87. 5: Real name Gillies Macbean.

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The blood of their boldest that barren turf stain, But alas! thine is reddest there, GOLICE MACBANE! Hewn down, but still battling, thou sunk’st on the ground, Thy plaid was one gore, and thy breast was one wound; Thirteen of thy foes by thy right hand lay slain; Oh! Would they were thousands for GOLICE MACBANE! (Golice Macbane ll.13-20)

Byron was now, after all his early anti-Scots animus, writing as a Scots patriot, for whom the English were the oppressors, and as a European liberal, lamenting the death of so many French patriots at the still more momentous battle which had just been fought – for we are, for “Culloden”, to read “Waterloo”, in the immediate aftermath of which (August 1815) the poem was written, and the outcome of which Byron, like many of his Whig friends, regretted. Waterloo gave victory to the hated Tories, the bloated Prince Regent, the eunuchoid Foreign Secretary Castlereagh, to the tyrannous King of Prussia, and to the Emperors of Austria and Russia. In his stanzas on the eve of Waterloo in Childe Harold III, it is the gallantry and ferocity of the Scots, not the English, soldiers that Byron celebrates – the thrilling noise of their bagpipes, not the squalling of the English fifes: And wild and high the ‘Cameron’s gathering’ rose! The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn’s hills Have heard, and heard, too, have her Saxon foes: – How in the noon of night that pibroch thrills, Savage and shrill! But with the breath which fills Their mountain-pipe, so fill the mountaineers With the fierce native daring which instils The stirring memory of a thousand years, And Evan’s, Donald’s fame rings in each clansman’s ears! (CHP III st.26)

“Her Saxon foes” are the English. Time is now lending enchantment to Byron’s view of Scotland. As his primary homeland, England, declines in his estimation – the year after Golice Macbane was written, he left the hated country, never to return – so his secondary homeland, Scotland, is forgiven her former sins, and readmitted into his favour. In 1821 he even considered buying back some of his mother’s land, writing ‘I have always preferred my mother’s family – for it’s royalty’.6 6: BLJ VIII 73.

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His famous Venetian lyric, So we’ll go no more a-roving, is in fact a translation of a song attributed to King James V of Scotland. He became nostalgic for his days at Aberdeen Grammar School. In January 1822 he wrote to Scott, to whom he had dedicated Cain, ‘my “heart warms to the Tartan” or to any thing of Scotland which reminds me of Aberdeen and other parts not so far from the Highlands as that town – (about Invercauld & Braemar where I was sent to drink Goat’s Fey in 1795-6 [following a] threatened decline after the scarlet fever)’.7 The “goat’s whey” reference is from Scott’s The Heart of Midlothian: Byron is now viewing the Scottish Highlands through the idealising lens created by Scott’s novels, which reaffirm the image he created for the country in his early verses. In October 1822 he wrote the tenth canto of Don Juan, which contains, in one of its early digressions (stanzas 16-19) an address to Francis Jeffrey, whom he still imagined to have reviewed his first book, but who had subsequently become one of the critics whom he trusted most. Byron’s tone when writing about Scotland is now quite altered: … all our little feuds, least all mine, Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe, (As far as rhyme and Criticism combine To make such puppets of us things below) Are over; here’s a health to “Auld Lang Syne!” I do not know you – and may never know Your face – but you have acted on the whole Most nobly, and I own it from my Soul. – And when I use the phrase of “Auld Lang Syne!” ‘Tis not addressed to you – the more’s the pity For me – for I would rather take my wine With you, than aught (save Scott) in your proud City; But Somehow – it may seem a Schoolboy’s whine, And yet I seek not to be grand, nor witty – But I am half a Scot, by birth – and bred A whole one, and my heart flies to my head, As “Auld Lang Syne” brings Scotland, one and all – Scotch plaids, Scotch Snoods, the Blue hills, and Clear Streams, The Dee, the Don, Balgounie’s brig’s black wall, All my boy feelings – all my gentler dreams Of what I then dreamt, cloathed in their own pall; 7: BLJ IX 87.

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Like Banquo’s Offspring floating past me seems My Childhood in this Childishness of mine – I care not; ‘tis a Glimpse of “Auld lang Syne.” – And though, as you remember, in a fit Of wrath and rhyme, when Juvenile and Curly, I railed at Scots to show my rage and wit – Which, must be owned, was sensitive and surly, Yet ‘tis in vain such sallies to permit – They cannot quench young feelings fresh and early; I “scotched, not killed” the Scotchman in my blood, And love the land of “Mountain and of Flood”. (Don Juan X sts.16-19)

“Balgounie’s Brig” is the tall, single-arched Bridge of Balgounie, built by Robert the Bruce in 1320, which commands a magnificent view of the estuary of the river Don. It is still to be seen, unchanged since Byron’s day, in a suburb of Aberdeen, in a sequestered residential area. Leaning over it and looking into the depths of the stream below – sharing both Byron’s boyhood dreams, and his adult dreams of them – one may imagine him doing the same, and understand why, despite its Calvinistic cant, its literary butchery, and its monumental depredations, he still loved Scotland – even though now only in retrospect. “He loved the mountains of Greece,” write Teresa Guiccioli, “because they recalled those of Scotland”; 8 and nostalgia may have been a factor in calling him to Greece in the last months of his life. Guiccioli quotes The Island: The infant rapture still survived the boy, And Loch-na-Gar with Ida look’d o’er Troy, Mix’d Celtic memories with the Phrygian mount, And Highland linns with Castalie’s clear fount. (The Island, II 291-3)

Troy, Scotland, and Delphi are blurring into a mythical unit in his mind. There was at first a strong link in Byron’s mind between Scotland and Albania. In a note to Childe Harold II, he writes:

8: Teresa Guiccioli, My Recollections of Lord Byron, and those of Eye-Witnesses of his Life, tr. Jerningham, New York 1869 p.359.

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The Arnaouts, or Albanese, struck me forcibly by their resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland, in dress, figure, and manner of living. Their very mountains seemed Caledonian with a kinder climate. The kilt, though white; the spare, active form; their dialect, Celtic in its sound; and their hardy habits, all carried me back to Morven. (CHP II note)

But the note continues, “No nation are so detested and dreaded by their neighbours as the Albanese …”

Byron was impenitent, over a decade later, in transferring his imagined parallel from the Albanians to the Greeks. There were a number of reasons. In the ranks of the British Philhellenes who risked, and often lost their lives, in the cause of Greek freedom, a disproportionate number were Irish and Scots. They seem to have viewed Greece as a displaced version of their own homelands – humiliated, and made a mockery to the world by centuries of bondage to gross and hypocritical imperialist neighbours and masters, as all three countries had been. Byron was not the least of these heroes. In Greece he attempted to set himself up as a Highland chieftain, trying to lord it over his men in feudal style. From Cephalonia he wrote, quoting Macduff’s description of his family, describing the Greeks as ‘… widows – orphans – refugees – and rascals of all descriptions of mine at one “swoop”‘;9 later, quoting Waverley again, ‘I think that they [the Greeks] will win. – At any rate I shall “cast in my lot with the puir Hill Folk”.10 From Missolonghi he wrote, ‘… as I pay a considerable portion of the Clans – I may as well see what they are likely to do for their money’.11 But his Suliote “Clan” proved refractory, arrogant, greedy, and ungrateful – everything the Highlanders at Culloden were not; and he gave up on them.12 Byron tried to create his ideal Scotland in Greece: the attempt killed him.

9: BLJ XI 77. 10: BLJ XI 82. 11: BLJ XI 102. 12: BLJ XI 111-112.

BYRON AND SHAKESPEARE

Byron is no Shakespeare, acute as is his ear for apt allusion, and cunning as is his critical faculty (sometimes). In III i, Manfred explains to the Abbot why he could never tolerate a role as political leader: Manfred:

Abbot: Manfred:

I could not tame my nature down; for he Must serve who fain would sway – and soothe – and sue – And watch all time – and pry into all place – And be a living lie – who would become A mighty thing amongst the mean, and such The Mass are; I disdained to mingle with A herd, though to be leader – and of wolves. The lion is alone – and so am I. – And why not live and act with other men? Because my nature was averse from life; And yet not cruel; for I would not make, But find a desolation: – like the Wind, The red–hot breath of the most lone Simoom, Which dwells but in the Desart ... (III i 116-29)

Compare Coriolanus at III ii 110-23: Well, I must do it. Away, my disposition, and possess me Some harlot’s spirit! My throat of war be turn’d, Which quired with my drum, into a pipe, Small as an eunuch, or the virgin voice That babies lulls asleep! The smiles of knaves Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys’ tears take up The glasses of my sight! A beggar’s tongue Make motion through my lips, and my armed knees, Who bow’d but in my stirrup, bend like his That hath received an alms! I will not do’t: Lest I surcease to honour mine own truth, And by my body’s action teach my mind A most inherent baseness. Unpublished.

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Byron would eschew, in Manfred as in his classical plays, such base figures as harlots, eunuchs, babies, knaves, schoolboys, knees, and alms (compare Dr Johnson laughing at the idea of the ministers of darkness peeping through a blanket). The result is that we can’t take the snobbish Manfred as seriously as we can the viscerally-repelled Coriolanus (it’s true that he is, as it were, on the spot, where Manfred is remembering). Lions and wolves are, Byron thinks, more dignified, because more distant and elevated. As a result of Byron’s misguidedly purified diction, Manfred’s fate smacks, therefore, somewhat of High Camp when compared with those of Coriolanus, or Macbeth.

————— Byron found Shakespeare worthy of condescension: Shakespeare’s name, you may depend on it, stands absurdly too high and will go down. He had no invention as to stories, none whatever. He took all his plots from old novels, and threw their stories into a dramatic shape, at as little expense of thought as you or I could turn his plays back again into prose tales. That he threw over whatever he did write some flashes of genius, nobody can deny: but this was all. Suppose any one to have the dramatic handling for the first time of such ready-made stories as Lear, Macbeth, &c. and he would be a sad fellow, indeed, if he did not make something very grand of them. [As] for his historical plays, properly historical, I mean, they were mere redressings of former plays on the same subjects, and in twenty cases out of twenty-one, the finest, the very finest things, are taken all but verbatim out of the old affairs. You think, no doubt, that A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse! is Shakespeare’s. Not a syllable of it. You will find it all in the old nameless dramatist. Could not one take up Tom Jones and improve it, without being a greater genius than Fielding? I, for my part, think Shakespeare’s plays might be improved, and the public seem, and have seemed for to think so too, for not one of his is or ever has been acted as he wrote it; and what the pit applauded three hundred years past, is five times out of ten not Shakespeare’s, but Cibber’s.1

1: B. to James Hogg, March 24th 1814 (BLJ IV 84-6).

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He speaks, firstly as a gentleman amateur, who wrote and published when he pleased, describing a professional who, with deadlines to meet and a company to keep in profit, adapted other people’s material as a matter of course; and secondly as a theatre-goer who had never seen a play by Shakespeare properly staged. This he concedes with “not one of his is or ever has been acted as he wrote it”, but without really understanding what that means. When John Philip Kemble played Hamlet, for example, he made dozens of cuts, including the King’s “Oh my offence is rank” and all of Fortinbras: but the show still lasted four hours. The need to project, unassisted by technology, into a three-thousand seat auditorium, long pauses, with music, to cover the changes of heavy, realistic sets, and a star system which ignored the demands of ensemble and character work, dictated as much out-front delivery as could be fitted in, and relied on spectacle, was a very effective way of murdering Shakespeare. Kemble employed a dying speech for Macbeth written by Garrick: Macbeth:

’Tis done! The scene of life will quickly close. Ambition’s vain, delusive dreams are fled, And now I wake to darkness, guilt, and horror. I cannot bear it! Let me shake it off. – ’Twa not be; my soul is clogged with blood. I cannot rise! I dare not ask for mercy. It is too late, hell drags me down, I sink, I sink – Oh! – my soul is lost forever! Oh! (Dies).

2

Kemble added injury to insult by cutting the lines in the Daggers Scene about murdering sleep.3 His Coriolanus was a version in part re-written by James Thomson;4 in Lear, there was a love-affair between Cordelia and Edgar. Other changes were as outrageous. In The Winter’s Tale, Kemble not only cut Perdita’s “Oh, Proserpina, for the flowers now that, frighted …” (on the grounds that a shepherdess wouldn’t have known Greek mythology); but actually replaced “Oh, she’s warm! / If this be magic, let it be an art / Lawful as eating” – the most important lines in the whole show – and, incidentally, the hardest to act – with this:

2: The Plays of David Garrick, ed. Pedicord and Bergman (Southern Illinois 1981), III 72. 3: Harold Child, The Shakespeare Productions of John Philip Kemble, Shakespeare Association 1935, p.9. 4: Ibid, p.15.

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Byron and Shakespeare Support me, Heaven! If this be more than visionary bliss, My reason cannot hold. My Queen, my life, But speak to me and turn me wild with transport. I cannot longer hold me from her arms. She is warm, she lives! … Her beating heart meets mine and fluttering owns Its long-lost half. It is Hermione!5

When Byron’s favourite Edmund Kean revived Richard II in 1815 it was in an adaptation by Richard Wroughton, in which Bolingbroke’s role was cut to a minimum, and the Queen entered after Richard had been murdered and exclaimed, “Why should a dog, a horse, a rat, have life, / And thou no breath at all?” Shakespeare’s action would be carved up into tableaux, separated, again, by musical interludes to cover scene changes; and effects which Shakespeare achieved by verbal suggestion were rendered banal by being translated literally into expensive scenic effects. Duncan could not say “This castle hath a pleasant seat” without standing at the entrance to a splendidly-designed castle: the audience were insulted by its being implied that they couldn’t imagine the castle as they listened. Hazlitt wrote, “The manner in which Shakespear’s plays have been generally altered or rather mangled by modern mechanists, is a disgrace to the English stage”.6 Byron wrote to Murray of The Two Foscari: You will find all this very unlike Shakespeare – and so much the better in one sense for I look upon {him} to be the worst of models – though the most extraordinary of writers. – It has been my object to be as simple and severe as Alfieri – & I have broken down the poetry as nearly as I could to common language. – The hardship is that in these times one can neither speak – of kings or Queens without suspicion of politics or personalities. – – I intended neither. – –7

And yet, as we saw above with Coriolanus and Manfred, Byron avoids “common language” in his dramas. 5: Ibid, p.12. 6: Hazlitt, Works, ed. Howe (1930), Vol. 4 p.300: “Richard III”. 7: B. to Murray, from Ravenna, July 14th 1821 (text from NLS Ms.43492; BLJ VIII 151-2).

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He did not, however, neglect to say that he derived his action and characters from “P. Daru’s history of Venice”; just as he derived Marino Faliero from (inter alia) Muratori’s 1748 Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, and Sardanapalus from Diodorus Siculus. After all, I hate things all fiction & therefore the Merchant & Othello – have no great associations to me – but Pierre8 has – there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric – and pure invention is but the talent of a liar. – – –9

So much for despising Shakespeare because “in twenty cases out of twenty-one, the finest, the very finest things, are taken all but verbatim out of the old affairs.” We look in vain for consistency in Byron. At the same time as decrying Shakespeare’s Venetian heroes in the above letter, he is writing … Ours is a trophy which will not decay With the Rialto; Shylock and the Moor, And Pierre, cannot be swept or worn away – The Keystones of the Arch! though all were o’er, For us repeopled were the solitary Shore. (Childe Harold IV 4 5-9)

… which puts “the Merchant”, “Othello”, and “Pierre” (from Venice Preserv’d) on an equal footing. ————— If we look for Shakespeare in Byron, we find him, in a sense, everywhere. Here is a mere selection of quotations (approximate and precise) from his letters: I have lately discovered Scrope’s genealogy to be ennobled by a collateral tie with the Beardmore, Chirurgeon and Dentist to Royalty, and that the town of Sothwell contains cousins of Scrope, who disowned them, (I grieve to speak it) on visiting that city in my society. – How I found out I will disclose, the first time “we three meet again”10 but why did he conceal his

8: In Otway’s Venice Preserv’d. 9: B. to Murray, April 2nd 1817 (text from NLS Ms.43489; BLJ V 203-5). 10: Shakespeare, Macbeth, I i 1.

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lineage, “ah my dear H! it was cruel, it was insulting, it was 11 unnecessary. – – nothing can deprive me of the past – and as to the future – what promise did it ever keep to any human being? – Besides – “there is a world beyond Rome”12 – and though you will not believe me – nothing but this confounded delay of Newstead &c. {could have} prevented me from being long ago in my isles of the East.13 I greatly fear that the Guiccioli is going into a consumption – to which her constitution tends; – thus it is with every thing and every body for whom I feel anything like a real attachment – “War – death – or discord doth lay siege to them”14 – I never even could keep alive a dog that I liked or that liked me. – –15 If you can’t be civil to Mr. John Hunt – it means that you have ceased to be so to me – or mean to do so – I have thought as much for some time past – but you will find in the long run (though I hear that you go about talking of yourself like Dogberry “as a fellow that hath had losses”)16 that you will not change for the better. – – – – I am worth any “forty on fair ground”17 of the wretched stilted pretenders and parsons of your advertisements. –18

Last, the best of them all: Ask him these questions about “scorching and drenching.” – Did he never play at Cricket or walk a mile in hot weather? – Did he never spill a dish of tea over his testicles in handing the cup to his charmer to the great shame of his nankeen breeches? – Did he never swim in the sea at Noonday with the Sun in his eyes and on his head – which all the foam of Ocean could not 11: B. to Hobhouse, from Newstead Abbey, January 16th 1808: (text from NLS Ms.43438 f.2; BLJ I 187-8). 12: Shakespeare, Coriolanus III iii 137 (in fact “there is a world elsewhere”). 13: B. to Lady Melbourne, January 10th 1814: (text from NLS Ms.43471 f.97; BLJ IV 21-2). 14: Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I i 142 (“War, death or sickness”). 15: B. to Hoppner, July 2nd 1819: (text from Newstead Abbey Collection RB H46 ALS; BLJ VI 174-6). 16: Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing, IV ii 82. 17: Shakespeare, Coriolanus, III i 242-3. 18: B. to Murray, September 23rd 1822: (text from NLS Ms.43493; BLJ IX 21213).

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cool? did he never draw his foot out of a tub of too hot water damning his eyes and his valet’s? did he never inject for a Gonorrhea? – or make water through an ulcerated Urethra? – Was he ever in a Turkish bath – that marble paradise of sherbet and sodomy? – was he ever in a cauldron of boiling oil like St John? – or in the sulphureous waves of hell? (where he ought to be for his “scorching and drenching at the same time”) did he never tumble into a river or lake fishing – and sit in his wet cloathes in the boat – or on the bank afterwards “scorched and drenched” like a true sportsman? – – – – “Oh for breath to utter!”19 – – – but {make} him my compliments – he is a clever fellow for all that – a very clever fellow. – –20

Note how he surrounds his Falstaff quotation with dashes. Don Juan I, 125, 4 contains Byron’s favourite phrase from Shakespeare, and it, too is from Falstaff: Who’ve made “us youth” wait too – too long already …

“us youth” occurs more often in his letters than any other (see BLJ III 15, 160, 161, 250, IV 115, VI 60, 200, VII 231) and is part of Falstaff’s cry (They hate us youth!) as he ambushes the travellers on Gad’s Hill, at Henry IV i II ii 85. The irony is (i) against Falstaff, who is no youth, and (ii) against Byron, who is no youth either. A doomed, Byronic version of Falstaff can be sensed subtextually beneath much of Don Juan. However, on the occasions when Byron borrows from Shakespeare in his works, we get a dilution of the original, a sketch which removes, above all, the multiple layers of irony created by the professional writer. The Bride of Abydos derives in outline from Hamlet: but whereas Hamlet himself can be an amusing fellow, no-one ever said that about Selim, hero of The Bride. Churchill’s Grave derives from Hamlet V i: but whereas Shakespeare’s Gravedigger sees Hamlet coming, and takes maximum advantage of him, Byron’s is just a simple man who gets a tip for his honesty. Anne Barton has drawn parallels between Lambro returning to his island and Prospero on his.21 What she doesn’t say is that Lambro is firstly a mere sketch version of part of Prospero (he has no magic powers), and secondly that, in his malignity and preparedness to kill his daughter’s 19: Shakespeare, Henry IV I II iv 238. 20: B. to Murray, August 12th 1819: (text from B.L.Ashley 4743; BLJ VI 206-10). 21: Barton, Byron and Shakespeare, in The Cambridge Companion to Byron (ed. Bone, CUP 2004), p.234.

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lover, he inverts all Prospero’s benign intentions. One can’t imagine Lambro reconciling himself with his enemies. Here’s a famous scene from Richard II: Re-enter Attendant, with a glass. Richard:

Give me the glass, and therein will I read. No deeper wrinkles yet? hath sorrow struck So many blows upon this face of mine, And made no deeper wounds? O flattering glass, Like to my followers in prosperity, Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face That every day under his household roof Did keep ten thousand men? was this the face That, like the sun, did make beholders wink? Was this the face that faced so many follies, And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke? A brittle glory shineth in this face: As brittle as the glory is the face; Dashes the glass against the ground.

Bolingbroke:

For there it is, crack’d in a hundred shivers. Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport, How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face. The shadow of your sorrow hath destroy’d The shadow of your face. (Richard II, IV i 276-92)

Here’s what Byron reduces it to: Sardanapalus: Sfero – I had forgotten – bring the mirror. Sfero: The mirror, Sire? Sardanapalus: Yes, sir, of polished brass, Brought from the spoils of India – but be speedy. Exit Sfero. Sardanapalus: Myrrha, retire unto a place of safety. Why went you not forth with the other damsels? Myrrha: Because my place is here. Sardanapalus: And when I am gone – Myrrha: I follow. Sardanapalus: You! to battle? Myrrha: If it were so, ‘Twere not the first Greek girl had trod the path.

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I will await here your return. The place Is spacious, and the first to be sought out, If they prevail; and, if it be so, And I return not – Myrrha: Still we meet again. Sardanapalus: How? Myrrha: In the spot where all must meet at last – In Hades! if there be, as I believe, A shore beyond the Styx; and if there be not, In ashes. Sardanapalus: Darest thou so much? Myrrha: I dare all things Except survive what I have loved, to be A rebel’s booty: forth, and do your bravest. Sardanapalus:

Re-enter Sfero with the mirror. Sardanapalus: (looking at himself): This cuirass fits me well, the baldric better, And the helm not at all. Methinks I seem Flings away the helmet after trying it again. Passing well in these toys; and now to prove them. Altada! Where’s Altada? (Sardanapalus, III i145-66)

Where Richard uses the mirror, firstly to exploit his own narcissism, and his continued inclination for self-display, creating a huge drama, upstaging everyone even in defeat, and Bolingbroke is moved to an ironic counter-interpretation, Sardanapalus really is only interested in his armour and how it looks on him. Where Shakespeare gives Richard an onstage audience to play to, Byron’s Sardanapalus has only two people with him. It’s an anti-climactic cheapening of its Shakespearean model. In Manfred, Byron assays an obvious lift from Macbeth. Shakespeare’s protagonist approaches the witches: Macbeth:

I conjure you, by that which you profess, Howe’er you come to know it, answer me: Though you untie the winds and let them fight Against the churches; though the yesty waves Confound and swallow navigation up; Though bladed corn be lodged and trees blown down; Though castles topple on their warders’ heads; Though palaces and pyramids do slope

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Their heads to their foundations; though the treasure Of nature’s germens tumble all together, Even till destruction sicken; answer me To what I ask you. First Witch: Speak. Second Witch: Demand. Third Witch: We’ll answer. First Witch: Say, if thou’dst rather hear it from our mouths, Or from our masters? Macbeth: Call ‘em; let me see ‘em. First Witch: Pour in sow’s blood, that hath eaten Her nine farrow; grease that’s sweaten From the murderer’s gibbet throw Into the flame. All: Come, high or low; Thyself and office deftly show! Thunder. First Apparition: an armed Head … and so on. (Macbeth, IV i 50-68)

Manfred likewise approaches Nemesis: Manfred:

Nemesis: Manfred: Nemesis: Arimanes: Nemesis: Manfred: Nemesis:

Ye know what I have known, and without power I could not be amongst ye; but there are Powers deeper still beyond. I come in quest Of such to answer unto what I seek. What wouldst thou? Thou can’st not reply to me; Call up the dead – my question is for them. Great Arimanes – doth thy will avouch The wishes of this mortal? Yea! Whom would’st thou Uncharnel? One without a tomb – call up Astarte. Shadow! or Spirit! Whatever thou art, Which still doth inherit The whole or a part Of the form of thy birth, Of the mould of thy clay, Which returned to the earth, Reappear to the day! Bear what thou borest, The heart and the form;

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And the aspect thou worest Redeem from the worm; Appear – Appear – Appear! Who sent thee there requires thee here! The Phantom of Astarte rises and stands in the midst … and so on. (Manfred II iv 74-97)

Byron borrows the idea, but again removes the irony (strangely, for a writer so habitually ironical elsewhere). The witches allow Macbeth to think he’s calling the shots and commanding them, while all the time they’re calling the shots, with a view to his destruction. Arimanes and Nemesis obey Manfred with no hidden agenda (after all, “Had he been one of us he would have made / An awful spirit”);22 and although what Manfred hears is in no way comforting, it is – unlike what Macbeth hears – the truth, not a trap (“Manfred – tomorrow ends thine earthly ills”). The determination to make Manfred heroic, an unillusioned victim only of himself, equal to the powers of darkness, lessens the complexity of the scene. For Byron does not appreciate the most elementary of Shakespearean techniques: Richard, played by an actor before an audience in the auditorium, is himself acting before an onstage audience, improvising his scene with great skill, utilising his prop creatively, manipulating his audience’s response, working the house like a professional. Meanwhile, Macbeth – who is incapable of acting (“Your face, my thane, is as a book / Where men may read strange matters”) – is the gullible victim of three virtuoso comediennes, who are working him like professionals, allowing him to believe that he’s in charge while all the time being in charge themselves. It’s strange that Byron, a lover of the theatre, no mean actor himself if report is to be believed, and no mean poseur and manipulator of other people himself, obliterates such most meta-theatrical of Shakespeare’s games when he writes his own plays. When Byron uses Macbeth in a more casual way, he still doesn’t seem to appreciate its ironies: Vernon, the Butcher Cumberland, Wolfe, Hawke, Prince Ferdinand, Granby, Burgoyne, Keppel, Howe, Evil and Good, have had their tithe of talk, And filled their Sign-posts then, like Wellesley now; Each in their turn like Banquo’s Monarchs stalk, 22: See Jerome J. McGann, Byron and Wordsworth (Nottingham 1999) pp.29-30.

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Followers of Fame, “nine Farrow” of that Sow; France, too, had Buonaparte and Dumourier Recorded in the Moniteur and Courier. – (Don Juan I st.2)

Here, heroes of the Seven Years’ War, the ’45 rebellion, and the Napoleonic Wars, are held up – like, Byron asserts, Banquo’s descendants – as illusory examples of patriotic success, all unworthy to be heroes of an epic poem. But, we protest, Banquo’s monarchs are visions, in Shakespeare, of a real future: Banquo really is going to be father to a line of kings. Macbeth’s reign will end with him, and his act in having Banquo killed is futile. He’s reduced to despair: he knows from now on that none of his murders will lead anywhere – though that doesn’t stop him from carrying out several more, increasingly horrible. Byron’s “Banquo’s monarchs” is just a satirical joke about inflated patriotism and its allied cant: again, he hasn’t got the Shakespearean idea. Much wittier is Byron’s use, in Don Juan, of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Mistress Ford is pretending to allow Falstaff to think he has a chance with her; and Mistress Page is assisting her in the anti-masculine joke: Re-enter Mistress Page and Robin Mistress Ford: Mistress Page: Mistress Ford: Mistress Page: Mistress Ford: Mistress Page: Mistress Ford: Mistress Page:

Mistress Ford: Mistress Page:

What’s the matter? how now! O Mistress Ford, what have you done? You’re shamed, you’re overthrown, you’re undone for ever! What’s the matter, good Mistress Page? O well-a-day, Mistress Ford! having an honest man to your husband, to give him such cause of suspicion! What cause of suspicion? What cause of suspicion! Out pon you! how am I mistook in you! Why, alas, what’s the matter? Your husband’s coming hither, woman, with all the officers in Windsor, to search for a gentleman that he says is here now in the house by your consent, to take an ill advantage of his assence: you are undone. ‘Tis not so, I hope. Pray heaven it be not so, that you have such a man here! but ‘tis most certain your husband’s coming, with half Windsor at his heels, to search for such a one. I come before to tell you. If you know yourself clear, why, I am glad of it; but if you have a friend here

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Mistress Ford:

Mistress Page:

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convey, convey him out. Be not amazed; call all your senses to you; defend your reputation, or bid farewell to your good life for ever. What shall I do? There is a gentleman my dear friend; and I fear not mine own shame so much as his peril: I had rather than a thousand pound he were out of the house. For shame! never stand ‘you had rather’ and ‘you had rather:’ your husband’s here at hand, Bethink you of some conveyance: in the house you cannot hide him. O, how have you Deceived me! Look, here is a basket: if he be of any reasonable stature, he may creep in here; and throw foul linen upon him, as if it were going to bucking: or—it is whiting-time send him by your two men to Datchet-mead. He’s too big to go in there. What shall I do? [Coming forward] Let me see’t, let me see’t, O, let me see’t! I’ll in, I’ll in. Follow your friend’s counsel. I’ll in. (The Merry Wives of Windsor, III iii 81-121)

Byron rewrites this, substituting Antonia for Mistress Page, eliminating any thought that both women are acting, and substituting a young and slender Juan (already in the bed) for an elderly and obese Falstaff (soon to be in the buck-basket): ’Twas Midnight – Donna Julia was in bed, Sleeping, most probably, when at her door Arose a clatter might awake the dead, If they had never been awoke before, And that they have been so we all have read, And are to be so, at the least, once more – The door was fastened, but with voice and fist First knocks were heard, then “Madam – Madam – hist! — “For Godsake, Madam – Madam – here’s my Master, “With more than half the City at his back – “Was ever heard of such a curst disaster! “‘Tis not my fault – I kept good watch – Alack! “Do, pray, undo the bolt a little faster – “They’re on the stair just now, and in a crack “Will all be here; perhaps he yet may fly “Surely the Window’s not so very high!” — By this time Don Alfonso was arrived, With torches, friends, and servants in great number;

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It’s an anti-feminine, not an anti-masculine joke. Where Falstaff is the dupe of his own lechery and Ford of his paranoid jealousy, Juan has already been to bed with Julia, and Don Alfonso, when he turns up, will discover his jealousy to be all-too-well-founded. Byron’s invention is much wittier than in the mirror scene from Sardanapalus, but in Don Juan the situation is much more straightforward than the one in The Merry Wives, where we’re aware of the women using their improvisatory skills to run rings round all the men, with the final aim of reconciliation and harmony. Julia uses her improvisatory skills (which are considerable) simply to lie her head off, as her husband and his posse search, and her lover lies, “half-smothered”, like Falstaff, not in any buck-basket, but in her bed. ————— In stanza 18 of Beppo,23 Byron had taken issue with Shakespeare’s depiction of Venetian husbands (a subject upon which he was an expert, having cuckolded several): Their Jealousy (if they are ever jealous) Is of a fair complexion altogether, Not like that sooty devil of Othello’s Which smothers women in a bed of feather, But worthy of these much more jolly fellows – When weary of the matrimonial tether His head for such a wife no Mortal bothers, But takes at once another, or another’s. –

23: Beppo’s climax (st.93, l.1) contains an obvious lift from Shakespeare: “Beppo! That beard of yours becomes you not …” for which compare The Taming of the Shrew, V ii 121-2: “Kate, that cap of your becomes you not: / Off with that bauble, throw it underfoot …” except that Laura can’t tell Bepppo to throw his beard underfoot.

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Beppo was written while Childe Harold IV was still in progress, and is in part a facetious comment on its portentous depiction of Italy, Venice especially. “… sooty” is indeed from Shakespeare: “If she ... / Would ever have, to incur a general mock, / Run from her guardage to the sooty bosom / Of such a thing as thou ...” (I ii 70). When we gather that Beppo had been “a Merchant trading to Aleppo”, we remember Othello’s last speech – “And say besides, that in Aleppo once …” (V ii 355-9) – the name isn’t just there to make a convenient rhyme. The line “Whate’er his Youth had suffered” (99 1) is straight from Othello (I iii 157): “I did consent, / And often did beguile her of her tears, / When I did speak of some distressful stroke / That my youth suffered.”24 Byron’s game is summed up in stanza 17: Shakespeare described the Sex in Desdemona As very fair, but yet suspect in fame, And to this day from Venice to Verona Such matters may be probably the same, Except that since those times was never known a Husband whom mere Suspicion could inflame To suffocate a wife no more than twenty, Because she had a “Cavalier Servente.”

“…very fair” is from Othello himself (“O thou weed / Who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet / That the sense aches at thee!”: IV ii 68). Whereas “but yet suspect in fame” is not said or even implied by Othello. It’s Byron’s identification with the trickster Iago25 not with Othello (he could never identify with a jealous husband), which causes this misattribution. At III iii 205-8 the Ancient says: I know our country disposition well; In Venice they do let God see the pranks They dare not show their husbands; their best conscience Is not to leave’t undone, but keep’t unknown.

The satire is directed at Shakespeare’s depiction of Venice as a setting for domestic tragedy (ignoring the fact that the real tragedy occurs in Cyprus). In Venice in 1817, at least, these things were not taken seriously. When Beppo “threw off the Garments which disguised him / And borrowed 24: The rough draft indicates that B. deliberately re-wrote to incorporate Othello’s line. 25: B.’s acting as Iago during the abortive rehearsals at Pisa was highly praised.

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the Count’s small-clothes for a day” (98 3-4) it’s analagous to Othello discovering his mistake, sitting down to a coffee with Cassio, and asking for a loan of his underpants; or Odysseus apologising to the Suitors and throwing a party for them to atone for his misunderstanding. ————— In the Norman Abbey cantos of Don Juan, we are to understand Aurora Raby as possessing Shakespearean (or “Shakesperian”) qualities: Aurora – since we are touching upon taste, Which nowadays is the thermometer By whose degrees all characters are classed – Was more Shakespearian, if I do not err; The Worlds beyond this World’s perplexing Waste Had more of her Existence, for in her There was a depth of feeling to embrace Thoughts boundless, deep, but silent too as Space. (Don Juan XVI st.48) Early in years – and yet more infantine In figure – she had something of sublime In eyes which sadly shone as Seraphs shine, All Youth, but with an aspect beyond Time – Radiant and grave as pitying Man’s decline – Mournful – but mournful of another’s crime – She looked as if she sate by Eden’s door, And grieved for those who could return no more. (Don Juan XV st.45)

We are to see her as resembling Miranda, as Miranda grieves for the supposed victims of the shipwreck – only on a larger scale. But Miranda possesses in addition a sexual appetite which dictates that she should disobey her father (like Juliet, but unlike Ophelia), and tell Ferdinand her name: Aurora, being an orphan, will never have that dilemma, and in any case lacks Miranda’s outgoing curiosity: She gazed upon a World she scarcely knew As seeking not to know it; silent – lone As grows a Flower – thus quietly she grew, And kept her heart serene within its zone … (Don Juan XV 47 1-4)

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But Shakespeare created (in addition to Miranda), Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban – to say nothing of Antonio and Sebastian. In reducing Shakespeare to “The Worlds beyond this World’s perplexing Waste”, Byron is trying to sentimentalize him out of existence. ————— However, there is one important way in which Byron reveals himself to be an acute critic of Shakespeare. All three of his satires in ottava rima are prefaced by epigraphs from Shakespearean comedies. In them, he is signalling the way in which the satires break from his previous, “romantic” work, and from his gloomy “Byronic Heroes”. First, the epigraph to Beppo: Motto. Rosalind. – “Farewell, Monsieur Traveller; look you lisp and wear strange suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be out of love with your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance you are; or I will scarce think that you have swam in a gondola. – As You Like It, Act 4. Scene 1. (As You Like it, IV i 30 et. seq.)

Second, the epigraph to The Vision of Judgement: “A Daniel come to judgement! yea, a Daniel! I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.” (The Merchant of Venice, IV i: Byron conflates)

Third, the epigraph to Don Juan Canto VI: Motto “Think’st thou? that because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more Cakes and Ale? – Aye! and Ginger shall be hot in the Mouth too! – – Twelfth Night or What You Will. (Twelfth Night, II iii, 108-12)

The first is directed at Jacques, the second at Shylock, and the third at Malvolio. All three characters resemble the Byronic Hero in several ways: they are egotistical, isolated, humourless, unlovable and unloving26 (unless they love ludicrously, like Malvolio),27 they dislike music and conviviality, 26: The Giaour and Selim seem capable of love, though it’s not clear whom The Giaour loves most – Leila, or Hassan; and once Selim admits he’s not Zuleika’s brother his “love” evaporates into speechifying. 27: Jacques lusts for both Orlando and “Ganymede”: but gets nowhere with either.

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and must be excluded from the drama before the song-and-dance finale occurs.28 If there’s a feast, they’re always spectres at it. Had Byron written a fourth ottava rima satire, he could have chosen a line from Much Ado, about Don John.29 ———— Shakespeare’s small parts are often show-stealers: I’ve known Justice Silence capture all the best paragraphs in notices to Henry IV II. It’s a sign of Shakespeare’s professionalism – he wrote for a company he knew well, and with whose individual skills he was intimate. Sheridan – Byron’s idol – did the same. Byron, writing for no company,30 doesn’t scatter his best lines so profusely. But there are signs that he was, towards the end of his truncated playwriting career, thinking of what enjoyment he could provide any actors who dared to put his plays on. Here is the end of Werner III i. Werner has just offered Idenstein a rich jewel if he will help him escape from the castle: Idenstein:

Werner: Idenstein:

Be you the man or no, ‘tis not my business; Besides, I never should obtain the half From this proud, niggardly noble, who would raise The country for some missing bits of coin, And never offer a precise reward – But this! another look! Gaze on it freely; At day-dawn it is yours. Oh, thou sweet sparkler! Thou more than stone of the philosopher! Thou touchstone of philosophy herself! Thou bright eye of the mine! thou load-star of The soul! the true magnetic pole to which All hearts point duly north, like trembling needles! Thou flaming Spirit of the Earth! which sitting High on the monarch’s diadem, attractest More worship than the majesty who sweats Beneath the crown which makes his head ache, like Millions of hearts which bleed to lend it lustre!

28: Twelfth Night has no dance in its finale: but Malvolio still has to leave the stage before the play ends. 29: “How tartly that gentleman looks! I never can see him but I am heart-burned an hour after.” 30: Though I believe he designed both Manfred and Faliero for Edmund Kean.

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Shalt thou be mine? I am, methinks, already A little king, a lucky alchemist! A wise magician, who has bound the devil Without the forfeit of his soul. But come, Werner, or what else? Call me Werner still, You may yet know me by a loftier title. I do believe in thee! thou art the spirit Of whom I long have dreamed, in a low garb – But come, I’ll serve thee; thou shalt be as free As air, despite the waters; let us hence, I’ll show thee I am honest (oh, thou jewel!) Thou shalt be furnished, Werner, with such means Of flight, that if thou wert a snail, not birds Should overtake thee. Let me gaze again! I have a foster-brother in the mart Of Hamburgh, skilled in precious stones – how many Carats may it weigh? Come, Werner, I will wing thee. (Werner, III i 322-55)

Though peripheral, this is one of the best speeches in the play, and the way the character suddenly comes to life shows how good a dramatist Byron might have become had he lived.31 All Harriet Lee gives in the source novel (The German’s Tale) is, “He produced the jewel. Idenstein started with astonishment! Chance, and some commercial connexions, made him a judge of its value. He looked earnestly at it, and considered long” (Lee, p.206). There may be some of Byron’s own greed for money in Idenstein’s inability to take his eyes off the bribe (“The copious use of Claret is forbid too – / So, for a good Old-gentlemanly Vice, / I think I must take up with Avarice”: Don Juan I 216 6-8). If that’s so, he should have allowed his own feelings into his plays as freely as he allowed them into his comic epic. There are signs in the Werner scene that he knows what games he’s playing with Shakespeare: lines 334-9 echo sentiments about the isolation of kings expressed by both Henry IV and Henry V, albeit from an original 31: “… Werner is … perhaps the closest Byron came to crafting dramatic dialogue with a Shakesperian resonance, particularly in the Falstaffian exchanges of the low characters, Idenstein and the peasants” (Jonathon Shears, Byron’s Aposiopesis, Romanticism 14.2 2008, p.184). At the 2013 International Byron conference, I asked an actress who had just performed in a scene from The Two Foscari how acting in Byron compared with acting in Shakespeare. She said that where Shakespeare’s verse gave you lots of help with breathing and phrasing, Byron’s gave you none.

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perspective (money is more charismatic than monarchs): and “But come, I’ll serve thee; thou shalt be as free / As air” comically inverts Prospero’s relationship with Ariel, making Ariel promise Prospero his freedom instead of the other way round. Werner was actually started in 1815, when Byron was on the Drury Lane committee. As he wrote more and more plays, he got further and further away from all thoughts of the London stage, until, when Drury Lane had the nerve to put on Marino Faliero, he was angry – embarrassed in case it failed, equally embarrassed (his opinion of Drury Lane audiences being that low) in case it succeeded. Having experimented, with decreasing thoroughness and conviction, with an Alfierian style (Alfieri would never have allowed his protagonists to immolate themselves on stage, as do Myrrha and Sardanapalus), he finally caved in to Drury Lane, and was trying, in The Deformed Transformed, at a more popular, more Shakespearean style. In The Deformed he brought horses on stage, music, magical transformations, battle scenes, and an attempted rape – real Shakespearean stuff, unthinkable in Faliero or The Two Foscari. The dual role-play which is central to the drama (Arnold playing the part of Achilles, and The Stranger playing the part of Arnold) would have shown at long last a greater awareness of Shakespearean metatheatricality – especially when Olympia was to fall in love with The Stranger playing the part of Arnold – which hadn’t been the original plan. But he didn’t finish The Deformed Transformed. He went to Greece, and died. ————— There is one very important Shakespeare quotation in Don Juan, and it’s not from a play but one of the sonnets – one of the few times Byron shows any acquaintance with them. The poet at Haidee’s party has just finished The Isles of Greece, a number adapted professionally to his audience’s taste. Byron comments: Thus sung, or would, or could, or should have sung, The modern Greek, in tolerable Verse; If not like Orpheus quite when Greece was young, Yet in these times he might have done much worse: His Strain displayed some feeling – right or wrong; And Feeling, in a Poet, is the Source Of Others’ feeling – but they are such liars, And take all colours – like the hands of Dyers. – – – (Don Juan III st.87)

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The couplet refers to Sonnet 111, which is Shakespeare’s apology for the humiliating metier in which he works, which forces him, too, to adapt his manner to the taste of whoever will pay him most: O! for my sake do you with Fortune chide, The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, That did not better for my life provide Than public means which public manners breeds. Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, And almost thence my nature is subdued To what it works in, like the dyer’s hand: Pity me, then, and wish I were renewed; Whilst, like a willing patient, I will drink Potions of eisel ‘gainst my strong infection; No bitterness that I will bitter think, Nor double penance, to correct correction. Pity me then, dear friend, and I assure ye, Even that your pity is enough to cure me.

Unlike Shakespeare, who sees being a public entertainer as “a strong infection” only, Byron at first concedes some dignity to his poet (“His Strain displayed some feeling – right or wrong”), and the ability to move people with his feelings: but in his conclusion takes it all back, and, quoting Shakespeare, reinforces Shakespeare’s belittlement of all poets as liars, false to themselves. Now it’s true that eight cantos later he puts the opposite case … And after all, what is a lie? ‘tis but The Truth in Masquerade; and I defy Historians, heroes, lawyers, priests to put A fact without some leaven of a lie; The very Shadow of the Truth would shut Up Annals, Revelations, Poesy, And Prophecy; except it should be dated Some years before the incidents related. Praised be all liars and all lies! (Don Juan XI sts.37-8)

… but here, in Canto III, on Haidee’s (temporarily) paradisal island, all poets and poetry are degraded and degrading, as Shakespeare asserts his own to be. It’s all a reflection of the fact that the perpetually antithetical Byron is unable to come to any conclusion about anything. Just as The Isles of Greece sways between despair at Greece’s chances, and exhortation to the

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Greeks to fight, so Byron’s evaluation of Haidee’s Poet sways between admiration at his adaptability and contempt for the way in which he gives his audience what they want, and so Don Juan as a whole runs an entire gamut from the implication that truth is the ideal aim of poetry, and delight at the fact that truth’s an aim it can never achieve, “subdued” as it is to mendacity. Haidee’s poet is often taken to be a weird amalgam of Byron and his despised doppelgänger, Robert Southey: but Southey wrote for no readership, and indeed didn’t have one: only one of his poems, The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo, reached a second edition. Whereas Byron’s volumes were best-sellers, and in the cases of Childe Harold III and IV and the Turkish Tales, aimed professionally – like the work of Haidee’s poet – at a readership Byron knew well, and in whose critical judgement he had scant confidence. The three ottava rima satires, by way of contrast, were written by Byron for his own amusement and satisfaction – written because he had to write them.

BYRON IN THE MOVIES

Given what an action-filled, technicolour life he led, there should be more good films about Byron. In fact, of the six I intend to describe,1 only one is any good – and it’s not a film, but a TV miniseries. The short Dread Poets Society (see final item) beats them all for wit. We start with The Bad Lord Byron (David MacDonald, 1948) in which a rather reserved Dennis Price is Byron. This models itself on Citizen Kane in that we see Byron’s life from several viewpoints, and on A Matter of Life and Death by setting its main action at heaven’s gate, where Byron is on trial. But it’s very short (only 87 minutes) and in 1948 you couldn’t be frank about wicked shenanigans, so, despite the presences of Mai Zetterling (Teresa Guiccioli) and Joan Greenwood (Caroline Lamb), exactly where Byron’s badness (or virtue) lay is never clear. To boost his image, he is shown fighting the Austrians (read “Nazis”) which the real man never did. This film ignores the “Frankenstein” summer of 1816, and Byron’s adventures at Diodati with Shelley, Mary and Claire Claremont. But the next three more than compensate. They came out within two years of each other, and are: Ken Russell’s 1986 Gothic, and two 1988 films, Ivan Passer’s Haunted Summer and Gonzalo Suarez’s Rowing with the Wind. It’s said that Ken Russell asked that the inscription on his gravestone should be “O.K., so I fucked up”. Gothic would provide more than enough evidence to support him. Byron is played by Gabriel Byrne as an evil bisexual rake, obsessed with blood, which he draws, indeed, from Claire Unpublished. Derived from The Life of Bryon, or Southey was Right, in Frances Wilson (ed.), Byromania, Macmillan 1999), pp.63-76, and Byron the Cinematic Image in Kenyon Jones, Christine (ed.), Byron: the Image of the Poet (Delaware 2008). 1: Not described here are a 1922 silent, The Prince of Lovers, with Howard Gay as Byron; the 1924 John Barrymore film Beau Brummel, where he is played by Andre de Beringer; the prelude to James Whale’s 1935 The Bride of Frankenstein, where he’s Gavin Gordon; a 1937 film called The Last Rose of Summer, in which Byron is played by Malcolm Graham; the 1954 Stewart Granger vehicle Beau Brummel, in which Byron is Noel Willman; and Lady Caroline Lamb (1972) where the role of Byron (Richard Chamberlain) is only a support. Roger Corman’s Frankenstein Unbound (1990) has Jason Patric as Byron.

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during an act of oral sex, performed while she lies comatose. Polidori (Timothy Spall), listening to her moans from his bedroom next door, tries to replicate her ecstasy by banging his hand on to a nail. Even when unconscious, Claire seems to enjoy Byron’s attention – just as she does when he forces her to vomit up her spaghetti over her dinner plate, and when, after she has drawn public attention to his club foot by crawling under the table and trying to take his boot off, he forces her head near the fire and threatens to burn off her luxurious dark curly hair. Full marks to Myriam Cyr, who plays the fantasy-Claire with professional abandon. Not even when Russell requires her to crawl naked from a corner of the Diodati cellar, covered in coal-dust and slime, with a dead rat in her mouth, does her conviction falter. Gothic has to be seen to be believed.2 It establishes two conventions which several later films replicate: Shelley must be seen naked in at least one shot, and Fuseli’s The Nightmare must be on the wall. Haunted Summer is actually a very good film as long as you don’t expect to learn anything about Byron from it. In it he (Philip Anglim) is again an evil bisexual rake, whose capacity for affection has been long stifled, and who has got Claire (Laura Dern) pregnant by accident, while harbouring lustful thoughts about Mary and wielding sadistic power in his relationship with Polidori (Alex Winter from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure). Mary (Alice Krige) is devoted to Shelley (the demure Eric Stoltz, seen early on showering nude under a waterfall) and finds Byron fascinating but distasteful. She takes advantage of Shelley’s permissiveness, and Byron’s interest in opium, firstly by getting Byron high, and scaring him out of his skull one midnight in the dungeon of the Castle of Chillon – using Polidori as a mock-Frankenstein monster – and then proving her greater strength of character by seducing him as he lies helpless in bed the next morning. Though completely misleading, the film has style. The idea of Hugh Grant as Byron might be heralded with relief after all the travesties so far listed. At last, Byron as a self-deflating humourist! Byron as the confused, helpless victim of his own needs and of any predatory female that happens by! Unfortunately, Rowing with the Wind, which does indeed star Hugh Grant, sees the poet as a heartless rake and a cruel manipulator of lesser lives, just like the two previous ones, except that he’s not bisexual, and Grant can’t muster the ideologically-necessary depth of lip-curling beastliness. Called upon to snarl with patrician 2: I once met the producer of Gothic. Hearing that I was a Byron specialist, she told me to avoid it.

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disdain, he frowns with boyish irritation. “Not my boots. Ever!” he snaps at Liz Hurley (Claire) as, in emulation of Myriam Cyr in Gothic, she kneels at his deformed foot and tries to undress him. “You have your mother’s Scottish heart! You’re a miserable Scotsman!” she snaps back at him a few scenes later, bidding him farewell with the lowest term of abuse she can think of. They have just buried Polidori (yes, in Switzerland) the Doctor having been driven to hang himself from the chandelier over the Diodati billiard-table (an item of furniture which looms large in Gothic). His death is occasioned by Byron, who hates him because he has poisoned Byron’s beloved dog in a fit of jealous pique, and who gives him its collar and chain, as a hint. Grant’s attempt at an Albanian war-song is hilarious. Nikos Koundouros’ 1991/2 Byron, Ballad of a Demon does not redress the usual Frankish imbalance towards fantasy and trash. A Graeco-Russian co-production, it’s regarded in Greece, in so far as it’s regarded at all, as an embarrassment. Manos Vakousis plays the hero rather as Klaus Kinski played Aguirre on his journey over the Andes – intense, staring eyes, pale, sweaty complexion, sick as a parrot and going slowly mad. He’s ugly, and bald. The film opens well – Byron and his party are silently paddled ashore at Missolonghi, in flat-bottomed boats through marsh and fog, with frogs croaking ominously all around and Turkish cannon- and musket-fire in the distance. No-one greets him, no-one smiles. The production design seems most authentic, with all the Greeks, wearing goatskins, visibly unwashed for many months. But the good effect is at once lost as the poet sighs, “Is this sunny Greece – the Greece of my dreams?” in flat contradiction to what we know to have been the real Byron’s awareness of what he was letting himself in for. The next nail in the coffin comes as a British figure looms out of the fog, says, “This is the Greece of the Greeks – and don’t forget it, Byron!” and introduces himself as “Major Leicester Stanhope”. In vain we protest that the idiotic Stanhope was a colonel, and that his intuitive understanding of the Greeks was summed-up in his desire to establish a free press – well before most Greeks could read. Missolonghi – to the film’s credit – is portrayed as a filthy town, covered in mud, slime and fog. Later, William Parry turns up. He and Byron, instead of getting pissed and making jokes about Jeremy Bentham – as did the real pair – strip a prostitute naked, and compare amorous experiences. “I’m here to get rid of my useless sperm,” Byron informs the lady in a later scene; “these trousers have always been too tight – or maybe I’ve just grown fat.” Why they’re all at Missolonghi – who they are – exactly what the relationships are between them – what the political and military situation is – are questions

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the film chooses not to answer. After an hour or so, you stop expecting anything to happen, and are thus not disappointed when nothing does. The dubbing is excellent. In 2003 the BBC put out – late at night – a two-part miniseries called simply Byron, directed by Julian Farino from a script by Nick Dear. It was on DVD, but is now (September 2014) on YouTube. Jonny Lee Miller is a (slender) Byron. It’s the only screen version of Byron’s life worth watching, even though it implies by its opening that the men, supposedly his friends, who burned his Memoirs, had read them – a natural mistake to make, for you’d think they would have (see opening essay). Decades of film-makers had been cagey about the poet’s interest in “transgressive” behaviour – here his attraction towards Greek youths, and towards Augusta, are given their due weight (hence the late-night transmission). Byron, Ballad of a Demon had shown Loukas Chalandritsanos rejecting his lewd advances at Missolonghi, and Augusta undressing copiously in flashback; but the film was so bad you neither believed nor cared. Having 147 minutes to play with allows the series time to move more slowly and to cover more detail (though, feeling perhaps that Diodati has been over-exposed, they don’t mention it). The relationships with Augusta, Lady Melbourne, Caroline Lamb and Annabella3 are much more comprehensible as a result; and for the first time Fletcher and Hobhouse have important parts. Small errors abound, many of them in the interests of economy and drama: the Girl Saved from the Sack was not one of Byron’s women, in so far as one can tell; Hobhouse wasn’t in the army, but the militia; Stephen Campbell Moore is much too handsome as Hobhouse; “Leveson-Gower” is pronounced “Lewson-Gore”; Halnaby is not by the sea; Claire Claremont arrives a year too early;4 Mrs Clermont is called Mrs Curtain; you were not visible bonking in a gondola; the Mocenigo menagerie did not include an ostrich and a llama … and so on. Very little of this matters. The imbalance is between Byron’s Years of Fame, which take up twothirds of the series, and his exile, which is consequently condensed.

3: There’s even a scene in which, as Hobhouse later wrote, he tries to “———” her. 4: Sally (Happy Go Lucky, Blue Jasmin) Hawkins is Mary Shelley: in one scene, she tells the repulsive story of the Greek sack of Tripolitsa.

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This is the only screen version which gives the viewer enough information to make them confident that they know Byron and his story: it even allows them to hear some of his poetry.5 ————— Dread Poets Society (Andy Wilson, 1992) is an act of revenge against Trinity College Cambridge (Byron’s college) which in 1987 first appointed Benjamin Zephaniah as Writer in Residence, and then, seeing a photo of him, rescinded the appointment. Zephaniah plays himself, and the film is set on a train travelling through a thunderstorm from Birmingham to Cambridge: although it pulls into Cambridge station from the south. Accompanied only by a philistine travelling salesman played by Timothy Spall – Ken Russell’s Polidori – Zephaniah is bewildered when, after one loud crash of thunder, four figures fall through a time-warp, and turn out to be Byron, the Shelleys, and Keats – the last housed a-historically at Diodati, for the convenience of the polemic. While Zephaniah takes them for students on a Rag Week stunt, they take the train to be Hell, and him to be a demon called “Anneka Rice”, from a facetious comment made by Timothy Spall’s salesman, and so on ... the jokes pile up, the point being that if there had been such a thing as a Creative Writing Fellowship at Trinity in 1816, and if degenerates like Byron, Shelley or Keats had stood for it, they’d have had as much chance of getting it as Benjamin Zephaniah did in 1987. At least, Keats and Shelley would have: over the rich and elitist Byron – high on laudanum for most of the scenario – there must hang doubt. Zephaniah finally gives five, not to him, not to Keats, but to Shelley, the “seditionist and atheist”. Both victims of the same Tory government and Tory press, they chant Shelley’s proto-Marxist Song to the Men of England. “Did you write that?” – “Yes!” – “Wicked lyric, guy!” ... “How come you to know my poem?” – “I saw Michael Smith do it on BBC2.” This exchange – aided by a rap which Zephaniah improvises to them all – encourages Mary to assert that the Rastafarian bard is indeed Shelley’s and her creature – made from brute matter by the power of their imaginations – but a bringer of political enlightenment, not of death. Despite this, Dread Poets Society ends with a freeze-frame of Zephaniah grinning to camera, as demon laughter echoes in the background. Perhaps,

5: In Rowing with the Wind, Hugh Grant voices-over some of Darkness; but gets it wrong.

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the film implies, such a bastion of obscurantist privilege as Trinity College Cambridge was, by its own lights, right ... The Satanic Four are played by Alex Jennings (Byron) Alan Cumming (Shelley, fully-clothed throughout for once) Emma Fielding (Mary) and Dexter Fletcher (Keats). They are allowed more jokes in their brief Spitting Image-roles than all the actors in all the cinema films put together. It’s a shame that none of the jokes are Byron’s. He was a very funny man – and a great poet: but it seems you can’t tell film-makers that. ———— Areas of Byron’s life covered by none of the films include his childhood at Burgage Manor, with his unaccommodating mother; his days as gangleader at Harrow; and his trip with Hobhouse from Malta to Tepellene to meet Ali Pacha (whatever happened there). No films mention Caroline Cameron, Susan Vaughan, Robert Rushton, Lady Oxford, or Marianna Segati. So there are still gaps waiting to be filled.

BYRON GREW UP IN VENICE

During Byron’s first year in Venice, he wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, projecting a melodramatic image of himself as a genius, cursed by fate, damned by his own nature: I twine My hopes of being remembered in my line With my land’s language: if too fond and far These aspirations in their scope incline, If my fame should be, as my fortunes are, Of hasty growth and blight, and dull Oblivion bar My name from out the temple where the dead Are honoured by the Nations – let it be – And light the Laurels on a loftier head! And be the Spartan’s epitaph on me – “Sparta hath many a worthier son than he.” Meantime I seek no sympathies, nor need; The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted: they have torn me, and I bleed: I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.1

However, after a year, he was writing of himself like this, in Beppo: But I am but a nameless sort of person (A broken Dandy lately on my travels) And take for Rhyme, to hook my rambling verse on, The first that Walker’s Lexicon unravels, And when I can’t find that, I put a worse on, Not caring as I ought for Critics’ cavils; I’ve half a mind to tumble down to prose, But Verse is more in fashion – so here goes!2

A talk given in Venice to the Circlo italo-britannico, November 16th 2009. Published in əɁɕɄ: ɄɍɅɖɌɍɊɇɕȿ ɄɈɇɐȿɉɌɕ: ɌȿɄɋɌ, Nizhni Novgorod 2009, pp.123-40. 1: CHP IV, sts.9-10. 2: Beppo, st.52.

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The satanic person who wrote the fourth canto of Childe Harold was far too self-conscious and arrogant – too much of a retarded adolescent – to describe himself as “a broken Dandy”, or to confess to using a rhyming dictionary. You could argue that the Byron who displays himself in Beppo is as much as a poseur as the one who wrote Childe Harold (he never was really a dandy, and there were some critics for whose cavils he cared quite a bit). But where the Harold-image is impressive but alienating, the Beppo-image would have us believe that Byron is a struggling failure just like the rest of us, a professional writer using the aids of a professional writer, and with his eye on the market (“Verse is more in fashion”). What brought Byron down from his self-created pedestal? I believe it was the society he discovered in Venice, where the social, psychological and cultural barriers, which had kept him apart from others in England, ceased to exist. In Venice he discovered a society which taught him that he was human, and in which his Harold-image was no longer tenable. Byron’s friend John Cam Hobhouse arrived in Venice for the second time on July 31st 1817, two-and-a-half months before the writing of Beppo. Within three days he was drawn deep into the social whirl when he, Byron and Matthew Lewis were invited to what Byron described economically as “the circumcision of a suckling Shylock”.3 Hobhouse found the operation itself brutal; but still more disturbing, to one possessed, as Hobhouse was, of such an apparently secure sense of his own identity as an individual, an Englishman, and a gentleman, were the social trappings surrounding it: After breakfast went at 12. to a circumcision to which all the ladies and gentlemen were invited and at which indeed I saw all the party of last night, which I understood to consist of the shattered remains of Venetian nobility now spread upon the banks of the Brenta and mixed and lost amidst the Jews and merchants who have purchased the better villas of this once patrician retreat – The Jewish lady last night was sitting up in bed with her child beside her under a muslin canopy. The room was set round with the female part of the company amongst whom were my young Misses of the lodgings who in the morning sweep my rooms and appear to me not unwilling to other little odd jobs when occasion should occur – Jews and Christians seemed to mix with perfect freedom and as I understand in the liaisons between the sexes there is a mutual interchange of good offices between the two religions – ... there was not a girl there who did not know what the child was to lose and more than one joked about the ceremony in my hearing – A lady said to me “you need not always go to the priest to have that service performed for you – the surgeon 3: BLJ V 255.

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does as well” – in short the society here seems upon the most liberal and extraordinary footing – Madame Zagati [Byron’s mistress] is amongst the most genteel and best received and the young men who are also at pot house doors in the morning in their shirt sleeves are the beaus of the evening – I went to the circumcision room – the rabbins were not to be known by their dress nor did I make out that any ceremony had commenced when two men in plain cloathes sat down next to each other and sung recitative out of two little books – talking to each other and the company at intervals –4

For Hobhouse, it was a nightmare. It was offensive enough that nobility should consort with merchants; that Jews should consort, both socially and sexually, with Christians, that women should consort with men at such an apparently masculine event and should joke about it, that the Rabbis should not be at once recognisable by their dress, that it should not be clear when the ceremony had started, that the “beaus” should be identifiable as the sports at the pothouse doors, and the ladies as the girls who swept his floor seductively each morning – it offended every preconception Hobhouse thought he possessed about his race, what religion he possessed, his gender, and his social standing. The categories by which he tried to define himself were seriously under threat: he went home and, to regain a sense of normality, read Scott’s Tales of my Landlord. The following day, at the installation of a local priest, he noticed a similar exhibition of what even he, secular though he was by instinct, felt could not be right: The Parrocho of the Mira sent Madame Zagati a present of figs – This to a woman living in open adultery is too bad, even I think. I saw him in friendly converse with the chief rabbi at the Circumcision – I hear to day that the presidents of the judicial tribunals here & at Venice are Germans and that the causes are tried in Italian!!!5

“... even I think” is self-deception. In England, Hobhouse was not just a liberal but a radical – only three years later, he was in jail for his political beliefs, and Wellington was to credit suggestions that he would have accepted the Presidency of a new republic, had the “Cato Street conspirators” succeeded in overthrowing the government. But in Venice, he was square as square could be, and all he could muster by way of countering the subversions of the place (Catholic priests on good terms with rabbis, Catholic priests giving presents to fallen women, “German” 4: B.L.Add.Mss. 47234; entry for August 2nd 1817. 5: B.L.Add.Mss. 47234; entry for August 3rd 1817

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judges trying cases in Italian), was rhetoric, as he showed in his diary within a week of arriving: Yet Venice itself is falling fast to decay – The natives of this country must not hope to establish a separate independence even by all these improvements but to qualify themselves for being the enlightened citizens of a much larger community in times when perhaps they may be proud to lose all individual distinctions in the name and character of Italians – !!6

What Venice lacked for Hobhouse was a category within which it could establish an identity similar to the one he had imagined he had as an Englishman, and which its present chaos threatened so disquietingly. Venice’s style – carnivalesque even outside carnival times – denied him the sense of self-worth which, in London, he thought he possessed. Venice’s style is written up by Byron thus: And there are dresses, splendid but fantastical, Masks of all times and nations, Turks and Jews, And Harlequins and Clowns with feats gymnastical, Greeks, Romans, Yankee-doodles and Hindoos, All kinds of dress, except the eccleciastical, All people, as their fancies hit, may chuse; But no One in these parts may quiz the Clergy, Therefore take heed Ye Freethinkers! I charge ye. – (Beppo, st.3)

Hobhouse was (or claimed to be) a freethinker. He took heed, and, when carnival time came up, he left this place, this Venice, this universal stewpot of disguise, play, seeming, and dissolving categories. Byron had been in Venice since the previous December, having settled here after quitting England following a disaster which was largely selfinflicted, but which had nevertheless left him a legacy of bitterness, and hatred of all things English. His exile had plunged him into a period of intense introspection, even more gloomy than usual for being more real than histrionic. He had written one poem – The Prisoner of Chillon – which Madame de Staël, one of its earliest admirers, had styled a “découverte effrayante dans de nouvelles regions de douleur”. His themes had been long, oppressive isolation, suffering, loss of society, loss of relations, further long isolation ... death-in-life and the unwilling emergence from it. He was currently, at intervals, writing another poem –

6: B.L.Add.Mss. 47234; entry for August 6th 1817.

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Mazeppa – which explored the same regions, in a more amused and hardened way. Venice was in many ways an apt location for gloomy reflections: if Byron was ruined, so was Venice. As he says in Childe Harold, “my Soul wanders: I demand it back / To meditate amongst decay, and stand / A Ruin amidst ruins”. Once the greatest maritime power on earth, Venice had become, since 1797, when Napoleon had given it to the Austrians, a series of desolate echoes of its own past. The Austrians had allowed its economy to run down, and the human cost was appalling. On August 31st 1817, Hobhouse writes in his diary: Doctor Sartori tells me that the Austrian government have [ ] done nothing for the poor here – that he, as doctor and deputato, gives a detail of all the deaths in the campo santo and has had to report upon examination that many have died of hunger and of grass, and other crude substances found in their intestines. Such misery was never known within his memory in Italy.7

Byron never refers to such issues in anything he writes while resident in Venice: he waits until he has left. He had experienced one Venetian carnival with its energetic debauches (for two years running, Hobhouse left Venice just before Carnival) and had emerged with a happy and undemanding relationship with that very Madame Segati whose name Hobhouse could never teach himself to spell. In short, he was becoming a Venetian, while not ceasing to be an English lord. If the city had ever threatened to subvert his identity, he would rather have welcomed the gesture than otherwise, so burdensome had his “identity” become; but it had not subverted it – it had enlarged it: or rather, had subverted and enlarged it. This change in Byron soon bore artistic fruit. In mid-September two old friends came to Venice. They were Charles, Lord Kinnaird, and his brother Douglas, one of Byron’s drinking companions from Cambridge, who was now his London agent (see Kinnaird chapter). They brought with them political gossip of the kind Hobhouse loved – but something else, too. Hobhouse’s diary for September 21st starts employed morning reading fourth canto to the Kinnairds – went out in the gondola with Lord Kinnaird, & Lord Byron, to the gardens – Lord

7: B.L.Add.Mss. 47234; entry for August 31st 1817.

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Byron Grew Up in Venice Kinnaird read to me a new poem of Frere’s, excellent & quizzical – no better since the days of Swift ...8

Hobhouse evidently thought Frere’s poem no great matter, for he makes few further references to it in his diary. It was called Prospectus and Specimen of an Intended National Work, and on its title-page its author, John Hookham Frere, masqueraded as “William and Robert Whistlecraft”, saddlemakers of Stowmarket in Suffolk. Neither did Hobhouse take any notice of its style, a version in English of the old Italian ottava rima stanza, as used by Ariosto – three increasingly desperate antitheses with the wind taken out of them by an anticlimactic couplet. Frere made the complex form seem easy and conversational, though his subject – rivalry between monks and giants in Arthur’s England – had little contemporary resonance and led nowhere. But Lord Kinnaird admired it for the metrical skill it displayed. As Hobhouse himself – who never really came to terms with what happened – later put it: ... the real origin of Beppo was Mr Frere’s burlesque poem “Whistlecraft” which the late Lord Kinnaird read to Byron in the autumn of 1817 at Venice. After reading it Lord Kinnaird asked Byron if he did not think it was a very clever and a very difficult performance. Lord Byron replied that he thought it very clever but not very difficult – and two days later produced Beppo.9

That was what Hobhouse said, with what hindsight he had. At the time, he could see the event only in the context of the much more important Childe Harold, and of his own relationship with Byron. On October 9th he wrote: walked in the garden – cold weather came home and wrote poetry in the Childe’s style – it is difficult but not inimitable – Byron has imitated Frere’s imitation in a description of Venice and done it well –10

Byron had written, in one night, most of the first half of Beppo: and in one more night he wrote most of the other half. For his friend it was a mere technical exercise, a squib tossed off with typical aplomb in between bouts (i) of debauchery and (ii) of writing the real poetry that was Childe Harold IV. In fact, in Beppo, Byron had – with what degree of selfknowledge we shall never know – found his real poetic voice, and had 8: B.L.Add.Mss. 47234; entry for September 21st 1817. 9: J.C.Hobhouse, unpublished criticism of Stendhal, quoted LLB, p.390. 10: B.L.Add.Mss. 47234; entry for October 9th 1817.

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made himself in forty-eight hours one of the truly great poets in the English language. The foundation of a great deal of Byron’s achievement lies in his first Venetain liaison, with Marianna Segati, the draper’s wife in the Frezzaria. When he went on his first eastern expedition, he had played romantic games with a number of middle-class and upper-middle-class women: Josepha Beltram in Seville, Constance Spencer Smith in Malta, Mrs Macri and her three daughters in Athens. He seems to have consummated his relationships with none of them, perhaps holding himself in reserve for the Greek youths he hoped to find, and whom, indeed, he did find. But of Marianna Segati he wrote to Thomas Moore on November 17th 1816: It is my intention to remain at Venice during the winter, probably, as it has always been (next to the East) the greenest island of my imagination. It has not disappointed me; though its evident decay would, perhaps, have that effect upon others. But I have been familiar with ruins too long to dislike desolation. Besides, I have fallen in love, which, next to falling into the canal, (which would be of no use, as I can swim,) is the best or the worst thing I could do. I have got some extremely good apartments in the house of a ‘Merchant of Venice,’ who is a good deal occupied with business, and has a wife in her twenty-second year. Marianna (that is her name) is in her appearance altogether like an antelope. She has the large, black, oriental eyes, with that peculiar expression in them which is seen rarely among Europeans—even the Italians—and which many of the Turkish women give themselves by tinging the eyelid,—an art not known out of that country, I believe. This expression she has naturally,—and something more than this. In short, I cannot describe the effect of this kind of eye,—at least upon me. Her features are regular, and rather aquiline—mouth small—skin clear and soft, with a kind of hectic colour—forehead remarkably good: her hair is of the dark gloss, curl, and colour of Lady J[ersey]’s: her figure is light and pretty, and she is a famous songstress— scientifically so; her natural voice (in conversation, I mean) is very sweet; and the naïveté of the Venetian dialect is always pleasing in the mouth of a woman.11

He refers to Marianna’s “large, black, oriental eyes” over and over again in his letters. On March 10th 1817 he wrote again to Moore: Have you seen * * *’s book of poesy? and, if you have seen it, are you not delighted with it? And have you—I really cannot go on: there is a pair of great black eyes looking over my shoulder, like the angel leaning over St.

11: BLJ V 129-32.

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Matthew’s, in the old frontispieces to the Evangelists,—so that I must turn and answer them instead of you.12

I believe Byron had never had a love-affair before of the relaxed intensity he found with Marianna Segati in the Frezzaria. He had experienced debilitating lust with Caroline Cameron; furtive tenderness with his half-sister Augusta; gross annoyance and weird games with Lady Caroline Lamb; and a kind of autumnal serenity, involving much intellectual discussion, with the Countess of Oxford. But, until he met Teresa Guiccioli (also, of course, in Venice), the only woman with whom he was infatuated, and with whom he could make love at any hour of the day or night (“I’ve known the absent wronged four times a-day”)13 had been Marianna Segati (Signor Segati got his pleasure with someone else’s wife). In Italy, there was none of the pretence and hypocrisy which surrounded adultery in England. Extra-marital relationships were built into Venetian culture: I said that like a picture by Giorgione Venetian women were, and so they are, Particularly seen from a balcony (For Beauty’s sometimes best set off afar) And there just like a heroine of Goldoni They peep from out the blind, or o’er the bar; And truth to say they’re mostly very pretty, And rather like to show it, more’s the Pity! For Glances beget Ogles, Ogles Sighs, Sighs Wishes, Wishes Words, and Words a Letter, Which flies on wings of light-heeled Mercuries, Who do such things because they know no better, And then God knows! what Mischief may arise, When Love links two young people in one fetter: Vile Assignations, and adulterous beds, Elopements, broken vows, and hearts, and heads. – Shakespeare described the Sex in Desdemona As very fair, but yet suspect in fame, And to this day from Venice to Verona Such matters may be probably the same, Except that since those times was never known a Husband whom mere Suspicion could inflame 12: BLJ V 185-6. 13: Don Juan III 25, 8.

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To suffocate a wife no more than twenty, Because she had a “Cavalier Servente.” Their Jealousy (if they are ever jealous) Is of a fair complexion altogether, Not like that sooty devil of Othello’s Which smothers women in a bed of feather, But worthy of these much more jolly fellows – When weary of the matrimonial tether His head for such a wife no Mortal bothers, But takes at once another, or another’s. – (Beppo, sts.15-18)

Byron’s liaison with Marianna Segati cooled, and terminated when he found a gift he’d given her – at the pawnbroker’s. He redeemed the gift, gave it back to her politely, and turned to a wider field. What happened then has been intermittently researched, but is not often commented on even – or should I say especially – in our politically correct days.14 At the end of 1818, on a voyeuristic hint from Hobhouse, he made the following confession: So Lauderdale has been telling a story! – I suppose this is my reward for presenting him at Countess Benzone’s – & shewing him – what attention I could. – – – – Which “piece” does he mean? – since last year I have run the Gauntlet; – is it the Tarruscelli – the Da Mosto – the Spineda – the Lotti – the Rizzato – the Eleanora – the Carlotta – the Giulietta – the Alvisi – the Zambieri – The Eleanora da Bezzi – (who was the King of Naples’ Gioaschino’s mistress – at least one of them) the Theresina of Mazzurati – the Glettenheim – & her Sister – the Luigia & her mother – the Fornaretta – the Santa – the Caligara – the Portiera Vedova – the Bolognese figurante – the Tentora and her sister – – cum multis aliis? – some of them are Countesses – & some of them Cobblers wives – some noble – some middling – some low – & all whores – which does the damned old “Ladro – & porco fottuto”? mean? – {I have had them {{all}} & thrice as many to boot since 1817}15

14: Though see David Laven’s essay in Litteraria Pragensia Volume 23, Issue 46 (December 2013), ed. Alan Rawes and Mirka Horová. 15: Text from NLS Acc.12604 / 4135A; BLJ VI 91-2.

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This complete immersion in debauchery wiped away any remaining illusions Byron had (not that he could have had that many) about the sexual appetites of women – appetites of which the cant of English culture denied the existence. The creative result was the first canto of Don Juan, his greatest poem (started in Venice), in which he not only credits women with a liking for sex, but, inverting the Don Juan stereotype, credits them with an aptitude for taking sexual initiatives. This, he claimed, was nearer the truth as he had experienced it. His Don Juan is a passive innocent, not a serial predator like Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Byron at first intended the first canto to be a poem in itself, ending with Donna Julia entering a convent (unrealistically, for adulteresses were never welcome in convents), and with Juan being sent on his tour of Europe. But the manuscripts – all written in Venice – show the canto developing more and more digressions, growing a dedication, directed at Robert Southey, the Poet Laureate, and Castlereagh, the Foreign Secretary, and in short becoming the prelude to a much bulkier work, in which the newly-liberated Byron could say all sorts of things, and insult as many whited sepulchres, as occurred to him. As he wrote much later to Douglas Kinnaird, You must not mind occasional rambling I mean it [Don Juan] for a poetical T. Shandy – or Montaigne’s Essays – with a story for a hinge.16

By the time he left Venice in the summer of 1819, he had written a second canto. As important in Byron’s Venetian existence as Marianna Segati was Margherita Cogni, “La Fornarina”, his affair with whom is the subject of the longest and most vivid letter he ever wrote.17 Where Marianna was a bourgeoise, Margherita was of the people. Marianna was a trained singer: Margherita was illiterate. The most revealing thing about Margherita is in a letter which she dictated to a scribe in May 1819, after Byron, exhausted by her rages, had thrown her out of the house: A tutto mi rassegnerò, mà per pieta vi sciongiuro per quell’amore, che avete per la cara Vostra Sorella, alla quale tante volte me avete detto, che qualche volta rassomiglio; accordatemi la grazia di bacciarvi la mano prima, che partiate, ove e quando non vi sarà d’incomodo, non me lo negate per carità, poscia resterò nella mia desolazione a piangere la mia innocenza, e la mia sventura … 16: Text from NLS Acc.12604 / 4135C; BLJ X 150. 17: BLJ VI 192-8.

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[I shall resign myself to everything, but for pity’s sake I beg you in the name of that love which you have for Your dear Sister, whom you have often told me I sometimes resemble, grant me the favour of kissing your hand before you leave, wherever and whenever it will not be an inconvenience; do not deny it for pity’s sake; afterwards I will remain in my desolation to weep for my innocence and my misfortune …]18

Not only did Byron always return to the bed of Margherita Cogni after each and every one of his hundreds of one-night stands; not only did the household expenses of the Palazzo Mocenigo drop by half during her stewardship (so badly did his servants normally cheat him); but it seems she reminded him of his half-sister Augusta, the woman he still loved most. In what way the large, dark Margherita resembled the fair, willowy Augusta, we can only guess – doubtless a capacity for laughter was part of the attraction. David Laven offers an analysis counter to the one here. However, he emphasises sex too exclusively as the way in which Byron related to Venice, and in any case, ignores the fact that more than one woman actually enjoyed Byron’s carnal company. Here, for an example, is the singer Arpalice Taruscelli: Povera Arpalice! ma povero Giorgio, se al mio ritorno li scopro! Non ti rendo conto di me, è inutile, basta solo che ti dica, che nè un’ora nè un momento si passa senza che non veda il mio Giorgio, e che non bacia col desiderio la sua bella bocca di rose; ma la bacierò Venerdì alle tre, ora alla quale io sospiro colla più fervida brama giacchè ti amo, e mi piace di ripetertelo. [Poor Arpalice! but poor George, if I find out about them on my return! I’ll not give you an account of myself, it is useless, it is enough to tell you only that neither an hour nor a moment passes without my seeing my George and wishing to kiss his beautiful rosy mouth; but I shall kiss it Friday at three o’clock, a time I sigh for with most fervid longing, for I love you, and I like repeating it to you.]19

For David Laven, Byron’s sexual encounters were all exploitative. The different ways in which Byron imagined the city – mythical, carnivalesque, social, political, satirical, historical – have all to give way before an exclusive concentration on his “self-aggrandising narrative” of erotic triumphs (p.44).

18: SAHC VII, ed. Reiman and Fischer (Harvard 1986) 518-19. 19: SAHC VII 336-7.

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Sex and satire were not the only things Byron learned in Venice: he also studied the city’s history, in the work of writers such as Sismondi and Darù, and contemplated its ruined present. So armed, he wrote his two Venetian plays, Marino Faliero and The Two Foscari. These, though they will never attain the popularity of Beppo and Don Juan, carry some of his gloomiest thoughts about politics and human tragedy. Written not in Venice but in Ravenna, they depict Venice, not in the jovial light of his ottava rima poems, but in much darker shades, as a city of oligarchical oppression, corruption, torture, and conspiracy. Here are Marino Faliero’s final thoughts about Venice, delivered after he, the Doge, has been condemned to death for conspiring against the government of which he was head. Italicised passages refer, surely, to Byron’s own experience of loveless Venetian lust: I perish, but not unavenged; far ages Float up from the abyss of Time to be, And show these eyes, before they close, the doom Of this proud city, and I leave my curse On her and hers for ever! Yes, the hours Are silently engendering of the day, When she, who built ’gainst Attila a bulwark, Shall yield, and bloodlessly and basely yield, Unto a bastard Attila, without Shedding so much blood in her last defence, As these old veins, oft drained in shielding her, Shall pour in sacrifice. She shall be bought And sold, and be an appanage to those Who shall despise her! She shall stoop to be A province for an empire, petty town In lieu of capital, with slaves for senates, Beggars for nobles, panders for a people! Then when the Hebrew’s in thy palaces, The Hun in thy high places, and the Greek Walks o’er thy mart, and smiles on it for his; When thy patricians beg their bitter bread In narrow streets, and in their shameful need Make their nobility a plea for pity; Then, when the few who still retain a wreck Of their great fathers’ heritage shall fawn Round a barbarian Vice of Kings’ Vice-regent, Even in the palace where they swayed as Sovereigns, Even in the palace where they slew their Sovereign, Proud of some name they have disgraced, or sprung From an adulteress boastful of her guilt With some large gondolier or foreign soldier,

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Shall bear about their bastardy in triumph To the third spurious generation – when Thy sons are in the lowest scale of being, Slaves turned o’er to the vanquished by the victors, Despised by cowards for greater cowardice, And scorned even by the vicious for such vices As in the monstrous grasp of their conception Defy all codes to image or to name them; Then, when of Cyprus, now thy subject kingdom, All thine inheritance shall be her shame Entailed on thy less virtuous daughters, grown A wider proverb for worse prostitution – When all the ills of conquered States shall cling thee, Vice without splendour, sin without relief Even from the gloss of love to smooth it o’er, But in its stead, coarse lusts of habitude, Prurient yet passionless, cold studied lewdness, Depraving Nature’s frailty to an Art – When these and more are heavy on thee, when Smiles without mirth, and pastimes without pleasure, Youth without honour, age without respect, Meanness and weakness, and a sense of woe ‘Gainst which thou wilt not strive, and dar’st not murmur, Have made thee last and worst of peopled deserts, Then, in the last gasp of thine agony, Amidst thy many murders, think of mine! Thou den of drunkards with the blood of Princes! Gehenna of the waters! thou Sea-Sodom! Thus I devote thee to the Infernal Gods! Thee and thy serpent seed! (Marino Faliero, V iii 41-101)

Byron’s retrospective disgust at his own debauchery is clearly figured in this speech. He appends a note: Should the dramatic picture seem harsh, let the reader look to the historical, of the period prophesied, or rather of the few years preceding this period. Voltaire calculated their “nostre bene merite Meretrici” at 12,000 of regulars, without including volunteers and local militia, on what authority I know not; but it is perhaps the only part of the population not increased. Venice once contained 200,000 inhabitants, there are now 90,000, and THESE!!20 few individuals can conceive, and none could 20: When I gave this talk in Venice in 2009, the city’s native population had for the first time dropped to below 50,000, and a “funeral” was held.

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Byron Grew Up in Venice describe the actual state into which the more than infernal tyranny of Austria has plunged this unhappy city.

It is one of the very few times when Byron mentions the dreadful economic and human costs of Austria’s occupation: and, he now asserted (with some hypocrisy), its moral costs too; this is one of his final comments on Venice. Never when he was there had he mentioned “the Hebrew … in thy palaces, / The Hun in thy high places”, or “the Greek … o’er thy mart”. Had he, two years earlier, really been as shocked as Hobhouse had been, by the way Jews were taking over the palazzos? Or is this just Faliero speaking? By 1820, when he wrote Faliero, Byron had put his Venetian promiscuities behind him, and was confining himself to “the strictest adultery” with Teresa Guiccioli in Ravenna. From this perspective, Venice’s ills had been brought upon her by her own depravities. Distance had lent disenchantment to his view of the city, where he had learned more about what it was to be human than in any other.

BYRON AND NEWSTEAD ABBEY1

Byron seems to have been at least two people, in the same body: Temperate I am, yet never had a temper; Modest I am, yet with some slight assurance; Changeable too, yet somehow “Idem semper;” Patient, but not enamoured of endurance; Cheerful, but sometimes rather apt to whimper; Mild, but at times a sort of “Hercules furens;” So that I almost think the same skin, For one without, has two or three within. (Don Juan XVII st.11)

We should not therefore be surprised if we can find no consistency is his attitude towards the ancestral seat he inherited unexpectedly in 1798, at the age of ten, on the death of his great uncle, the “Wicked” Fifth Lord Byron. On the one hand, he wrote poetry expressing nostalgic fondness for it, firstly, in Childe Harold (for which see below); secondly, in a verseletter to his half-sister: I did remind thee of our own dear lake By the old hall which may be mine no more; Leman’s is fair, but think not I forsake The sweet remembrance of a dearer shore: Sad havoc time must with my memory make Ere that or thou can fade these eyes before – Though like all things which I have loved, they are Resigned for ever, or divided far. (Epistle to Augusta, st.10)

Lastly, in his masterpiece, Don Juan, where he describes some features visible still in 2014 (some not):

1: Beckett: John Beckett (with Sheila Aley), Lord Byron and Newstead, the Aristocrat and the Abbey, Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002.

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Byron and Newstead Abbey It stood embosomed in a happy valley, Crowned by high Woodlands where the Druid Oak Stood like Caractacus in act to rally His host, with broad Arms ’gainst the Thunder-Stroke; And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally The dappled foresters as Day awoke – The branching Stag swept down with all his herd, To quaff a Brook which murmured like a Bird. Before the Mansion lay a lucid lake, Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a river which its softened way did take In currents through the calmer water spread Around; the wild fowl nestled in the brake, And sedges brooding in their liquid bed; The Woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood With their green faces fixed upon the flood. Its outlet dashed into a steep Cascade, Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding Its shriller Echoes, like an infant made Quiet, sank into the softer ripples, gliding Into a rivulet – and, thus allayed, Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods – now clear, now blue, According as the Skies their shadows threw. (Don Juan XIII sts.56-8)

On the one hand, he wrote poetry about it. On the other hand, he sold it. Normally an aristocrat could not sell his estate, because he didn’t own it outright, but held it in trust for his heirs – who wouldn’t be able to sell it either. Thus the blue blood of England was protected against its own welldocumented tendencies to live badly, waste its birthright, and self-destruct. But, owing to an error on the part of the “Wicked” Fifth Lord’s lawyers in 1773, the Sixth Lord Byron – the poet – inherited it, not as a life tenant, as was usual, but as owner of the fee simple: that is, it was his absolute possession. With the death at the siege of Calvi of the “Wicked” Lord’s grandson, William John Byron (on July 31st 1794), the “Wicked” Lord thought that he would regain the fee simple, and thus control of the future of Newstead; instead, he found that the estate was to go to the next male heir within the extended family – namely, the poet, who was the grandson of his younger brother, Admiral “Foul Weather” Jack. The “Wicked” Lord had, by the time the Poetical Lord inherited, denuded Newstead of

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everything valuable, like the great picture collection, containing works by Rubens, Canaletto, Holbein, Van Dyke and Titian.2 W.S.Hasleden had worked in the chambers of John Hanson, lawyer to both the Fifth (“Wicked”) and Sixth (Poetical) Lords Byron. In 1853 he recalled: Upon the marriage of his son, he [the “Wicked” Fifth Lord], as any other father would do, granted a settlement of his property, including the Newstead Abbey estate; but by some unaccountable inadvertence or negligence of the lawyers employed, the ultimate reversion of the feesimple of the property, instead of being left, as it ought to have been, in the father as the owner of the estates, was limited to the heirs of the son. And upon his death, and failure of the issue of the marriage, the unfortunate father, this eccentric lord, found himself robbed of the fee-simple of his own inheritance, and left merely the naked tenant for life, without any legal power of raising money upon it, or even of cutting down a tree.3

The law was afterwards changed, to make such disasters impossible; but in this case the lawyers’ error meant, firstly, that the Poetical Lord would be able to borrow money using Newstead as security, and secondly, that he would be able to sell it, in 1817, in defiance of tradition, without legal difficulty, to pay off his massive debts – by the end of a single term at Cambridge, they had totalled £1,000. He protested over and over again his determination not to sell Newstead. To his lawyer, John Hanson, he wrote from Athens, in the midst of the Mediterranean tour which produced Childe Harold: Dear Sir,

Yours arrived on the first Inst. it tells me I am ruined. – It is in the power of God, the Devil, and Man, to make me poor and miserable, but neither the second nor third shall make me sell Newstead, and by the aid of the first I will persevere in this resolution. – My “father’s house shall not be made a den of thieves.”4 – Newstead shall not be sold. 5

2: Beckett 44. 3: N&Q 8, no. 192 (July 2nd 1853), 2; quoted Beckett p.81, n67, for which see Beckett p.308. 4: Biblical; Matthew 21:13. 5: B. to John Hanson, from Athens, November 11th 1810: text from B.L.Egerton 2611 ff.214-15; BLJ II 25.

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And to his best friend, John Cam Hobhouse, in the same month (note the way he avoids a Freudian slip at the end): Letters I have had, yours of Cagliari; and two billets from Hanson, he wants me to sell Newstead, but I wont, and pray repeat my negative as strongly as possible. – – My affairs are greatly embarrassed, & I see no prospect of their ever being better, but I will {not sell} my abbey for man or the Devil.6

Yet less than two years later, on August 14th 1812 (Byron having returned from the East), Hobhouse records in his diary: Went to Garroway’s Coffee House to the sale of Newstead Abbey by auction by a Mr Farebrother – where having first secured myself with Byron, I bid twelve times and left off at 113,000 guineas – for the large lot – which was brought in at 115,000 guineas – Byron having fixed £120,000 as the price. The second was brought in at 13000 guineas. Never having done the like before, I was, before the thing began, in a complete fever – but was told by Hanson, Byron’s solicitor, that I came off most admirably – I had just then only one pound one shilling and sixpence in the world.7

Here is all the evidence we have from which to reconstruct the last trip which Hobhouse took to Newstead Abbey in Byron’s lifetime. The trip had occurred two months before the abortive sale, just mentioned: Thursday June 4th (1812): Set out with Byron and Captain George Byron, his heir, to Newstead – slept at Market Harborough. Friday June 5th: Arrived at Newstead – – – – – – – – – – Saturday June 6th: At Newstead – took sweating walk – Sunday June 7th: At Newstead – – – Monday June 8th: At Newstead – – – Tuesday June 9th: At Newstead – two letters from Pater – one telling me Moira was minister – the other that Liverpool had, after all, come in –

6: B. to Hobhouse, from Athens, November 26th 1810: text from NLS Ms.43438 f.20; BLJ II 27-31. 7: B.L.Add.Mss. 56530.

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Wednesday June 10th: At Newstead – a page came from Lady Caroline Lamb with letters for Byron – dreadful body – Thursday June 11th: At Newstead – sailed on the lake – Friday June 12th: Set off from Newstead at eight. Slept at Woburn – House-maid at Newstead 0 – 11 – 0 5 This whole week passed in a delirium of sensuality –8

If Hobhouse really had, as the final figure implies, paid a Newstead housemaid 11s 5d for her bodily favours, it would confirm what Byron had first written about the house, in Childe Harold: The Childe departed from his father’s hall: It was a vast and venerable pile; So old, it seemed only not to fall, Yet strength was pillared in each massy aisle. Monastic dome! condemned to uses vile! Where Superstition once had made her den Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile; And monks might deem their time was come agen, If ancient tales say true, nor wrong these holy men. (CHP I st.7)

Paphian girls are “devotees of Aphrodite” – prostitutes. Just as “The Childe departed from his father’s hall”, so did his creator. For Byron rarely, if ever, “resided” in his ancestral seat. At first he and his mother found it too damp and run-down to live in anyway, which is why they lived in Nottingham and in Burgage Manor, Southall: but even after the Abbey was made less uninhabitable, its owner didn’t use it as a base, only as a bolt-hole. He was so indifferent to (or frightened by) his role as landowner, that he didn’t even spend his twenty-first birthday party at Newstead, as any self-respecting lord would, but dined alone in London on “eggs and bacon and a bottle of ale”,9 while the Abbey servants celebrated without him. Five hundred local people attended the party, an ox was roasted, six sheep consumed, and six hogsheads of ale and 150 gallons of punch drunk. To frequent Newstead would imply it to be his home, and Byron and the concept of Home did not coexist happily. As with relationships – he was only happy in relationships involving 8: B.L.Add.Mss. 56530. 9: BLJ X 52; quoted Moore’s Life (1830) I 158; quoted Beckett (116 n2) as “Boyes, My Amiable Mamma 145”.

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homosexuality, adultery, or incest, where commitment was impossible – so with home. When he tried to set up a real home in 1815 – with wife and future family, at 13, Piccadilly Terrace, London – he avoided paying the rent, for that, too, would imply commitment, and Byron was always passing through on his way to somewhere else – somewhere else undefined. One reason why he left England in 180910 was because he had sired a child on one of the Newstead serving-girls,11 and Byron would have been very unhappy indeed living in a country where evidence existed that he was an adult – evidence which Newstead would have provided. Byron, not having grown up at Newstead, was under disadvantages from which a “normal” heir would not have suffered. He knew nothing of the estate when he inherited it, he was not intimate with the tenantfarmers, and he had not witnessed the day-to-day running of the place at the knee either of an experienced and benevolent father, or at that of a professional estate-manager. The state of the place, while Byron lived elsewhere – that is, for most of the time – is summed up in a letter his mother wrote to John Hanson: I have not seen Newstead myself but I must inform you that almost every Person I meet informs me of the shameful state it is in, all the county talks of it and says its is quite a disgrace for any Person in the character of a Gentleman to keep a place in such a Beastly state (that was the expression that was used). The new windows in the long dining room have disappeared so I am told but all that must be looked after before his Lordship leaves the place.12

When after the publication of Childe Harold he became London’s darling, Byron (self-conscious in that role), went to Newstead to avoid book-launches. From January 17th to February 6th, 1814, he was at Newstead with Augusta, and missed the launch of The Corsair (in August he was in Hastings with Augusta when Lara, sequel to The Corsair, was launched). The last time he visited Newstead was in September, 1814: his last letter from the Abbey is dated September 7th 1814. He never took his bride there – she first visited it, incognito, years after they separated. One woman in Byron’s life is associated with Newstead, and with Newstead alone. This is Susan Vaughan, a Welsh maid-servant with whom 10: The question asked in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. 11: See Ralph Lloyd-Jones, Paphian Girls and Hyacinths: Byron’s Servant Relationships, in Cochran (ed.), Byron and Women [and Men] CSP 2010, pp.14760. 12: B.L.Egerton 2611, quoted LBAR p.81; Boyes, My Amiable Mamma, p.134.

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he was involved at the end of 1811 and the start of 1812. This was the period of the Luddite disturbances, when he observed much of the material he used in his famous House of Lords speech in March. Susan seems to have awoken no little passion in the twenty-three-year-old Lord, and we have a number of her letters to him, including this description of his twenty-fourth birthday party (at which, it goes without saying, he was not present, any more than he had been at his twenty-first). The letter gives an excellent impression of convivial life at Newstead. Susan uses commas as apostrophes, and often begins a new line with a capital letter, so I have kept her lineation: I will not Say any more – Filling my letter about those Celebrated Characters About Newstead Abbey, only just to inform My Affectionate friend what his little witch – Having done the honor to his birth day which Is as follows.) – on Tuesday I was rambling all over The garden and woods around the house, gathering Ground Ivy and all other green branch or pretty Sprig to dress the stone parlour with where we ment to keep your birth day and not forgetting Mine) if you my Dearest friend knew how Proud I was and Still more happy when I thought of both – being on one day. – but to tell you my ever dearest How very gay I made the room with Hanging the Long Ivy Carelessly all round the Parlour in drapings It hung very pretty – and very {Tasty} done all about here Said it was ). the walls where scarsely seen for green branches Hanging loosely over them and The Pillar which stands in the middle, was dressd exactly like jack in the green with every green leaf and sprig I Could find I assure you it really Lookd very nice and gay and also to Compleat It well I wrote an invitation to Mrs Fletcher13 and One to Lucy14 one to Robert15 one to Mary16 and one to Spero17 and Bessy18 Requesting the favor of their Companys to tea and Supper19 13: Wife to William Fletcher, B.’s valet, who is with him in London. 14: Lucy or Lucinda, presumed mother of B.’s son. 15: Robert Rushton, B.’s page. 16: Mary, otherwise unidentified servant. 17: Spiro Saracci, one of B.’s two Greek servants. 18: Bessy, another otherwise unidentified servant. 19: Notice that Owen Mealey, the estate-manager, is not invited.

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Byron and Newstead Abbey Dont laugh when Taffy20 tells what she thought would Suit their palates I forgot they all wrote me a Note in Answer to mine which I shall keep to Show you when you return to me). discription of the Dresses – all the pure Virgins was in white two in Particular Shining out to see which cut the dash In gold Chains Now Laugh again, when I tell you how spitefully I look,d at Lucy,s, and she at mine I like me own best not a straw for hers Mrs F And children was dressed to the tip of the moode) Mr Murry21 in a Cock,d hat lookd like the beadle of a Parish – but now in reallity they all Honord the day very much indeed in respects to dress the first go was taffy ready to receive the Company) the next go was tea And Coffee if you please after that was Cleared away, Mr Murry sang a very pretty song of the Sort, then Mrs F done the same pretty well Bessy being Next was under the necessity of singing something, so it was to Lucy being the next neighbour I believe she just thought of it then – Saying Lucy Lucy raise your voice and This night lets all Rejoice, all be happy all bee gay Byron,s and Susan,s natal day – Very good – Lucy Sang your Song Robert would Say nought about it not even my Health). but did squeeze out your my dearest friend – which pleased me Best, after that they begd taffy would Dance for them nor indeed could I refuse when I thought of you and that was all the while. My part end,d and three Virgins had a Reel, then it was Supper time the Cloath was laid in great stile believe me I had a spare rib of pork at the top an apple pie at the bottom a pork pie in the middle potatoes at one corner sellery at the other mince pies and Custards at the other two Corners after that cheese and the Cloath was removed a small table set Round with glasses and punch we had forsooth Mr Murry Drank your health wishing you many happy returns of the Day – three Cheers follow,d in the next glass {little} T the same They afterwards asked me to give a toast I immediately Thought of you paused a moment, and rose up with My fine toast it was the following) Long may me Lord live happy may he be blest with Content & From Misfortune free. – The others Sanction,d It Said The Same I did not tell you of a nice plum

20: “Taffy” is B.’s pet-name for Susan. 21: Joe Murray, head servant at Newstead. B. wanted to be buried with him, and with Bosun, his favourite dog.

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cake we had more singing and dancing ended this grandure, the Company dispers’d, and I find most Pleasure in writing to you my dearest friend pray write as Soon as you can and tell me what your opinion is of all my Noncensical tales. I am afraid you will be Angry at them. god bless you my dear Lord Byron the Clock is now striking five Thursday morning no Sleep to night shall long for an answer to this Letter …22

It’s very sad that the subject of all this celebration couldn’t be bothered to attend (he was in London). Susan’s talk of “virgins” is a jest: Byron had been to bed with her and Lucy, at least, and who knows whether it was Mary or Bessy whom Hobhouse was to remunerate with 11s 5d later in the year? The big shock for Byron came soon after this letter, when he discovered that Susan had seduced Robert Rushton, his page. We shall never know what Rushton’s relationship with Byron was. Caroline Lamb (“dreadful body”), later claimed that Byron had debauched Rushton: if he had, it doesn’t seem to have affected Rushton’s sexual orientation. The knowledge that his mistress had bedded a young man he favoured devastated Byron, just as Shakespeare was devastated when the Dark Lady bedded the Fair Young Man (“Two loves have I, of comfort and despair …”). To Francis Hodgson Byron wrote, “I can’t blame the girl, but my own vanity in believing that ‘such a thing as I am’ could be loved”;23 and the pain of the realisation may have occasioned the frequency in his poems (The Giaour, The Corsair, The Bride of Abydos …), of triangular tragedies, and of triangular comedies (Don Juan, Beppo). Rushton received a sad, quasi-paternal rebuke: but Susan Vaughan was dismissed. ————— At the 1812 auction, no-one had been quite interested enough in Newstead to go to Byron’s price for it. But 115,000 guineas would have settled all his debts, paid Hanson, and left enough for Byron to invest and live on. In

22: Susan Vaughan to B., from Newstead Abbey, January 22nd 1812; text from NLS Acc.12604 / 4247K. 23: Books and Manuscripts from the English Library of Archibald, 5th Earl of Rosebery and Midlothian, K.G., K.T., Sotheby’s, London, 29 October 2009, lot 19; quoted by kind permission.

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the final upshot, Newstead was to be sold for the substantially smaller sum of £94,500. The morning after the attempted auction, Byron received an offer for Newstead which stood at £140,000 – about £20,000 more than the unsuccessful bid on the previous day, and £45,500 more than what he would eventually make on the property! (In fact, £140,000 was a ridiculous and unrealistic price.) It seemed his troubles were over; but if anything in his life might teach him that human expectations were doomed always to be answered by anti-climax and long-drawn-out disappointment, it was this boost to his hopes: for the bidder was a Lancashire lawyer called Thomas Claughton, who hovered, as a Nemesis, around the poet’s life for the next six Years of Fame, rendering it a morass of alternating doubt, confidence, uncertainty, hope and despair. For much of these years, it wasn’t even clear who owned Newstead Abbey – at one point, Claughton and Byron even resided there together. Claughton was a property-speculator. He may have been so confident because he anticipated a rise in land prices as soon as the war was over and government stocks fell. He may have been interested in Newstead’s coal-mining potential. Alas, we have no documents which enable us to read his mind: he may just have been short-sighted and incompetent; though his behaviour seems to indicate he knew what he trying to be about. Those tenant farmers who knew Byron welcomed him back whenever he did visit, contrasting his patriarchal ways with those of the cold and cash-nexus-bound Claughton. To one farmer he said, getting out of his boat and shaking him by the hand, “Beardall you are one of the oldest friends I’ve got”.24 It makes him sound like a charming version of Michael Henchard, and Claughton a charmless version of Donald Farfrae, from The Mayor of Casterbridge. But Byron did not bury himself on his manor, and did not turn into a bearded, misanthropic hermit as he had told Thomas Moore he would.25 He only stayed a month, and left on September 21st 1814: for it was while he was Newstead that he received Annabella Milbanke’s acceptance of his marriage proposal. As I’ve written, he never saw Newstead again. —————

24: Quoted Beckett p.182. 25: B. to Moore, from Hastings, August 3rd 1814; BLJ IV 151-3.

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The wretched tale of his pre-exilic finances shows a fatal passivity on Byron’s part, and, as far as Newstead goes, a fatal lack of conviction – even of interest – in his role as a landed aristocrat. As John Beckett writes, “Byron’s touching faith in Claughton was much like his touching faith in Hanson”.26 To this we could add, “… and much like his touching faith in Sir Ralph Milbanke”, or, “… much like his touching faith in the literary judgement of the myopic William Gifford,” or, “… much like the faith of some of his Newstead tenants in him”. He was an insecure amateur, squashed between professional sluggards and incompetents. Only one person seems to have been concerned about his indifference to his feudal duties – his friend and confidante Lady Melbourne, herself a keen and conscientious estate-improver. On February 2nd 1814 she wrote to him: I approve of your plan about Rochdale, & very much agree with your Agent, for really in your Situation it would be very improvident, to sell every bit of landed property, for although you may determine to live abroad how can you be certain yt you shall always adhere to such a resolution, & even if you were for the present, – who knows what views you may have hereafter, – you may marry & have a Son & then you would regret his succeeding to the Peerage & having no property except Money – in this Country where Land gives so much more influence. – I have no doubt that Mr H. was right in advising you to sell N– because paying one’s {debts} & obtaining a Sufficient / Sufficient Income are objects that should be accomplish’d, – but after that selling more, is only what short sighted persons would do; for though you get more income at ye moment you lose great advantages, nobody so young as you are, can know ye resources of a landed Estate, or the improvements that may be made by good management – I should suppose that besides laying out money upon opening a Colliery, or a LeadMine and what ever it may be that you have in View at R. that there must be several parts of the Estate where you might plant with great advantage – that to me seems the surest means of obtaining a large profit at a Small comparative expence – it is Nonsense what people say commonly, yt you Plant for your Grandchildren, a Small Sum of money laid out yearly if done in proper Soil and Situation will make a much greater return than is generally supposed many Sorts of Timber as extremely Valuable of 20 Yrs 26: Beckett p.189.

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Byron and Newstead Abbey growth or even less, – since they have now discover’d the use of different kinds of Wood which formerly were reckon’d [Ms. tear: “worthless”??] forbearing – I am aware how very much this answer must bore you & therefore I shall not add to the length of it by saying any thing upon other Subjects …27

Lady Melbourne’s is the only surviving voice raised against Byron’s neglect, and final disposal, of Newstead Abbey: I find none of his peers raising eyebrows, and assume silent jealousy to be the cause – how many of them wished they could sell their ancestral seats! The Newstead tale terminates happily – happily, that is, given the circumstances and personalities involved. A truly happy ending would have Byron holding on to his inheritance through thick and thin, going to Greece, surviving the War of Independence in triumph, and returning to England in the early 1830s, to a well-deserved retirement on his Nottinghamshire estate, and to finish Don Juan. Instead, in December 1817 Colonel Thomas Wildman put in a bid for Newstead (all 3,226 acres of it) for £94,500, and was accepted. In fact the trustees eventually received £97,972. Byron heard about the successful sale on December 11th 1817,28 and signed the deeds on November 11th 1818 – the day he sent Don Juan Canto I to England.29 Wildman acquired Newstead formally in February 1819. Byron was pleased that Wildman was to take over the running of Newstead, for Wildman was not just a veteran of Waterloo (he’d been aide-de-camp to Uxbridge), but an ex-Harrovian to boot. The Abbey in its present state owes much to his improvements, and to the twentieth-century work of Nottingham City Council, its present owners. Byron would not have recognised its interior – whether he would have been ashamed at the implicit rebuke of his own indifference and neglect is a matter for speculation. Under Wildman, Newstead throve. Wildman was what the place had always needed: a resident owner, who believed in it, and in his own role in relation to it. He rationalised the estate, built new stone farmhouses (according to Washington Irving, at least), and gave everyone a new sense 27: Lady Melbourne to B., February 2nd 1814; (text from NLS Ms.43472; unpublished). 28: BLJ V 277-9. 29: BLJ VI 76-8. It seems on this occasion to have been either Hanson père or Hanson fils who told him that “Bob” Southey had been spreading rumours about him, and his “League of Incest” with Shelley, Mary Godwin, and Claire Claremont.

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of security. He secured Joe Murray’s place – just in time, for Joe Murray, Byron’s most faithful retainer, after Fletcher, died in 1820. Not least important, though least-hymned of Wildman’s deeds, was the decision to install water-closets in the Abbey itself: and the remainder of his committed restoration work – £100,000 worth – is with us today.30 After Byron’s death the Abbey became a shrine to his memory – with what justice, no-one asked, any more than they asked with what justice he was buried in the family vault of an estate which he had sold. Wildman was happy to encourage such meta-historical fantasies. One point which will be forever undecided is this: was Wildman encouraged in his renovations by Byron’s description of “Norman Abbey” in Don Juan Canto XIII? Or was Byron, hearing about the excellent work Wildman was doing there, anxious to give him a parallel dream to emulate when he wrote, for instance, A glorious remnant of the Gothic Pile (While yet the Church was Rome’s) stood half-apart In a grand Arch which once screened many an aisle; These last had disappeared – a loss to Art; The first yet frowned superbly o’er the Soil, And kindled feelings in the roughest heart Which mourned the power of Time’s or Tempest’s march, In gazing on that venerable Arch. – Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle, Twelve Saints had once stood sanctified in Stone – But these had fall’n – not when the Friars fell, But in the war which struck Charles from his throne – When each house was a fortalice, as tell The annals of full many a line undone – The Gallant Cavaliers – who fought in vain For those who knew not to resign, or reign. But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned, The Virgin Mother of the God-born child, With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round, Spared by some chance when all beside was spoiled; She made the Earth below seem holy ground; This may be Superstition weak or wild, But even the faintest relic of a Shrine Of any worship wakes some thoughts divine. (Don Juan XIII, Sts.59-61) 30: Except for the recently-stolen (2011) lead drainpipes.

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It is “Superstition, weak or wild”, for Newstead was never as beautiful as this – the Newstead Cavaliers were never Gallant,31 and the faceless statue of the Virgin, what’s left of it, has I think never possessed the charm to inspire this degree of reverence – not since the Civil War. Norman Abbey in Don Juan is as much a fantasy-Newstead as the “vast and venerable pile” of Childe Harold, with its Paphian girls, singing and smiling as the Nottinghamshire females never did (except, as Susan reports, on Byron’s birthday). Byron perpetrates falsehoods upon Newstead Abbey in poetry with the same insouciance as he betrayed it in real life. Colonel Wildman, and subsequent generations, down to the present, have attempted to atone for him.

31: Sir John Byron was a Royalist general who went abroad with Charles II, having been ennobled by him in 1643. Eleanor, his wife, was said by Pepys and others to have been the Merry Monarch’s seventeenth mistress.

THE CORSAIR, BYRON’S SILLIEST POEM First published NBSR, 2005

“The inscrutable appearance of Conrad is a mirror in which the observer sees his own life in a clarified extreme. To the reader the Byronic hero whispers, threatens: Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère.” – Jerome McGann.1

John Cam Hobhouse thought that the two finest works of his friend Byron were The Corsair, and Childe Harold IV: sure sign of his poor literary judgement, for The Corsair is, with Lara, one of the most incoherent and ill-focussed of Byron’s narrative poems. One would like to know how many of the ten thousand people who bought it on its first day of issue read it more than once. Conrad’s covert homosexuality is planted discreetly as he disembarks in Canto I: They watch his glance with many a stealing look, To gather how that eye the tidings took; But, this as if he guessed, with head aside, Perchance from some emotion – doubt, or pride, He read the scroll – “My tablets, Juan – hark – Where is Gonsalvo?” In the anchored bark.” “There let him stay – to him this order bear. Back to your duty – for my course prepare: Myself this enterprize to-night will share.” (The Corsair, ll.149-57)

We are curious. What is the importance to him of Gonsalvo, that it should be Gonsalvo for whom he first asks on landing? Perhaps he feels a paternal interest in him. Perhaps they have a master-pupil relationship. He has a mistress, too, Medora, meek, malleable and musical; but he doesn’t ask for her first. No sooner does he enter their abode than he announces that he’s got to depart. It really is a Groucho Marx situation: “Hello, I must be going.”

1: Don Juan in Context, (John Murray 1976), p.30.

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The Corsair, Byron’s Silliest Poem “… I cease to love thee when I love mankind; Yet dread not this – the proof of all the past Assures the future that my love will last; But – oh, Medora! nerve thy gentler heart; This hour again – but not for long – we part.” (ll.405-9)

Is Conrad heterosexual at all? Ghislaine McDayter puts it well: Medora … is the embodiment of sensuality. She resides in a tower protected by the pirates and filled with the spoils of their battles. It is a pleasure palace of wine, lilting song, sherbets, and soft flesh, and it exists for Conrad almost as a constant scourge. He does not surrender to its pleasures, but rather takes pleasure in the repeated denial of his desire. If the Freudian hysteric is a subject who desires endlessly to desire, deferring satisfaction at all costs, then Conrad certainly fits the psychoanalytic bill.2

He’s certainly self-defeating in military terms. It’s never made clear, for example, why his expedition to attack Seyd’s stronghold can’t wait until the next day. We never know what’s in the Greek spy’s letter which he’s given at line 143, and reads at line 153. But it makes for a dramatic and sentimental farewell scene. Medora speaks: “This hour we part! – my heart foreboded this; Thus ever fade my fairy dreams of bliss – This hour – it cannot be – this hour away! Yon bark hath hardly anchored in the bay. Her consort still is absent, and her crew Have need of rest before they toil anew; My love! thou mock’st my weakness; and wouldst steel My breast before the time when it must feel; But trifle now no more with my distress, Such mirth hath less of play than bitterness.” (ll.410-19)

Is there really no time for the cuddle she’s been months waiting for? Our suspicion is that he’s not the kind of man who gives cuddles to women. As he sails away, we hear again of young Gonsalvo: They gain the vessel – on the deck he stands. Shrieks the shrill whistle – ply the busy hands – He marks how well the ship her helm obeys, 2: Ghislaine McDayter Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture (SUNY Press, 2009) pp.93-4.

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How gallant all her crew – and deigns to praise. His eyes of pride to young Gonsalvo turn; Why doth he start, and inly seem to mourn? Alas! those eyes beheld his rocky tower, And live a moment o’er the parting hour; She – his Medora – did she mark the prow? Ah! never loved he half so much as now! But much must yet be done ere dawn of day – Again he mans himself and turns away; Down to the cabin with Gonsalvo bends, And there unfolds his plan, his means, and ends … (ll.573-86)

“… never loved he half so much as now”? Who is it that he loves? Medora? Gonsalvo? Both? We never find out; but wonder what he does, “bending” with young Gonsalvo, and what “unfolding his ends” involves. For the fourth and last reference to young Gonsalvo, see line 1627, quoted below. Conrad is a prey to the self-destructive instinct in a big way. Not only is he a huge bluffer as heterosexual; he now leads his men into an obvious trap with maximum élan, and when captured fights like mad against all attempts to free him. In Canto Two he infiltrates his enemy’s stronghold, disguised as a dervish, or wandering Islamic holy man: why? the stronghold has been reconnoitred already. I think he goes in with a view to being captured and his force defeated. One of the early reviewers agreed: Conrad … seems to have less judgment than courage; for he disguises himself, for no apparent reason, as a dervise, and presents himself at the pacha’s palace, where he is introduced to, and questioned by, Seyd. He represents himself as having been taken prisoner by the pirates, and conveyed to their isle, whence he has made his escape. Before the pacha has finished his questions, the pirates have begun their work of destruction, and the flames from the fleet are seen by the pacha, whose suspicions, most naturally, fall upon the dervise, whom he orders instantly to be put to death. Conrad now throws off his disguise, and appearing ‘clad in complete steel’ brandishes his sword, and deals destruction on his foes, as if resolved to sell most dearly that life which he had so needlessly, and so foolishly, exposed.3

3: AntiJacobin Review, March 1814, p. 227: The Romantics Reviewed, ed. Donald H. Reiman, Garland 1972, I 45.

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In Canto III, chained to a wall in a dungeon, he is visited by Gulnare, the odalisque whom he has saved from the burning seraglio, and who has fallen for him. She offers him escape (he is going to be impaled on the morrow); but he refuses – he says he deserves death! “Thou must die! Yes, thou must die – there is but one resource, The last – the worst – if torture were not worse.” “Lady! I look to none; my lips proclaim What last proclaimed they – Conrad still the same; Why shouldst thou seek an outlaw’s life to spare, And change the sentence I deserve to bear? Well have I earned – nor here alone – the meed Of Seyd’s revenge, by many a lawless deed.” (ll.1446-54)

Gulnare, who makes no reference to the self-evident fatuity of this position, disappears to the bedroom of her hated lord and master. The AntiJacobin reviewer takes up the story: He [Conrad] follows her, and, after wandering about the tower, reaches a gallery, where, at length, he meets Gulnare, and, on seeing a drop of blood which her hand has left on her forehead, he betrays as much horror as Lady Macbeth with her “out, damned spot!” In short, the most pure, the most virtuous, the most innocent heart, would not manifest more symptoms of abhorrence at a deed of blood, than does this pirate, whose life has been devoted to acts of violence, rapine, plunder, and death, at the spot of blood on Gulnare’s forehead. To us, we confess, the fastidiousness, the reluctance, the scruple, displayed by Conrad, to take the life of a man who has doomed him to the most cruel death; and his subsequent horror at Gulnare’s conduct, appear inconsistent with his general character. The man who could harbour such feelings as are assigned to Conrad on this occasion, could not, we think, lead the life which Conrad has led, or act as Conrad has acted.4

The “most cruel death” of impalement would involve a large wooden pole being shoved up his bottom – perhaps he anticipates such a thing with pleasure? Here is the moment which shows his fastidiousness and reluctance most clearly:

4: AntiJacobin Review, March 1814, p. 232: The Romantics Reviewed, I 47.

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They meet – upon her brow – unknown, forgot – Her hurrying hand had left – ’twas but a spot – Its hue was all he saw, and scarce withstood – Oh! slight but certain pledge of crime – ’tis blood! 10. He had seen battle – he had brooded lone O’er promised pangs to sentenced guilt foreshown – He had been tempted – chastened – and the chain Yet on his arms might ever there remain – But ne’er from strife, captivity, remorse – From all his feelings in their inmost force – So thrilled, so shuddered every creeping vein As now they froze before that purple stain. That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak, Had banished all the beauty from her cheek! Blood he had viewed – could view unmoved – but then It flowed in combat, or was shed by men! (ll.1581-96)

Did ever an authentic pirate react to bloodshed so wimpishly? He finds Gulnare ten times more scarey than we do: How much had Conrad’s memory to review! Sunk he in contemplation, till the cape Where last he anchored reared its giant shape. Ah! – since that fatal night, though brief the time, Had swept an age of terror, grief, and crime. As its far shadow frowned above the mast, He veiled his face, and sorrowed as he passed; He thought of all – Gonsalvo and his band, His fleeting triumph and his failing hand; He thought on her afar, his lonely bride: He turned and saw – Gulnare, the homicide! (ll.1620-30)

But is he not a homicide himself? Has he really been a pirate all this time, and never killed anyone? Another early reviewer agreed: We think … that his abhorrence of Gulnare for this act [killing Seyd] certainly not a feminine one, but yet a terrible proof of sincerity, is not

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The Corsair, Byron’s Silliest Poem consistent with his character nor perhaps with nature. We can scarcely abhor the crime that is heroically perpetrated for our own deliverance.5

In fact, Conrad’s excessive scruple when offered escape from his dungeon by Gulnare in the second canto is a result of Byron borrowing the entire episode from William Sotheby’s translation of Wieland’s oriental epic Oberon (1798),6 where the ethics are quite different. Almansaris, the Sultana of Tunis, has (Gulbeyaz-like), conceived a wild lust for the blueeyed, blond, knightly hero, Huon (disguised as Hassan, the gardener): but Huon’s thoughts are all for his beloved, Rezia (now christened Amanda). One morning Alamansaris, lute in hand, tries to seduce Huon in her grotto – but is interrupted by the arrival of her husband, the Sultan Almansor! (pp.382-403). Crying “Alla be prais’d!” she pretends that her seduction is an attempted rape by Huon, and Huon is thrown into a dungeon to be burnt on the morrow, “When the imam summons from the tower”. The echoes so far are less of The Corsair, and more of Don Juan V. But here are stanzas 32-35 of Oberon’s twelfth canto, where the echoes of The Corsair are obvious: When half the world lay wrapt in sleepless night, A jarring sound the startled hero wakes: With grating keys the dungeon hoarsely shakes, The iron door expands: a paly light Gleams thro’ the vaults, at distance dim descried: He hears a step draw near – in beauty’s pride A female comes – wide floats her glistening gown, Her hand sustains a lamp, her head a crown: Lo! the sultana’s self stands graceful at his side! The smiling queen her beauteous hand extends – “Wilt thou forgive that counterfeited part, “When dire necessity belied my part? “O thou belov’d! my life on thine depends! “Oh! let this act that transient ill atone! “Spite of thy struggles here I come alone, “From death to snatch thee from that flaming pyre, “Where the stern tyrant dooms thee to expire,

5: Universal Magazine, February 1814, p. 134-5: The Romantics Reviewed, V 2317-18. 6: This plagiarism was first pointed out by Alaric Watts in The Literary Gazette; though see also Coleridge, III 263, and Elizabeth French Boyd, Byron’s Don Juan, A Critical Study (Humanities, New York, 1958), pp.126-7.

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“And raise thee to the height thou well deserv’st – a throne. “Arise! for thee the sunny paths expand “Of empire – love conducts thee – wake to fame! “Let glory to the world thy deeds proclaim. “Go, where love guides thee by this proffer’d hand. “The ruthless tyrant dies! his guards retreat! “His slaves, like dust, shall fall before thy feet – “The harem to my nod obedient yields: “Love opes thy prison, love thy bosom shields: “Go forth! What love has dar’d, heroic youth! complete.” ‘Desist, O queen! The plan thou deign’st propose, ‘Barbs with new pangs the shaft of tort’ring pain. ‘Ah! why against my will my soul constrain ‘To scorn each gift that from thy bounty flows? ‘No deed of guilt shall these vile fetters loose!’ – “Can folly thus,” she cried, “thy soul abuse? “Wretch! while destruction tow’rs before thy sight, “And on yon pile death waves thy funeral light, “Canst thou my proffer’d hand, and throne at once refuse?”7

Wieland’s / Sotheby’s hero thus has a much better reason for refusing to be rescued – he’d have to sleep with and even marry his rescuer, whose embraces he shuns. This (we realise with interest), is not an option even hinted at in The Corsair: all Gulnare expresses for Conrad is gratitude. And Huon is much more attached to his beloved Rezia / Amanda than Conrad is to Medora. Byron has stolen the situation, but changed its context, in such a way as to make the protagonist’s motives far less clear. Conrad the pirate is given the feelings of Huon of Bordeaux, the Christian knight. Gulnare, however, is not given the sexual appetite of Alamansaris; for part of the secret of Byron’s success with his “Turkish Tales” is / was that none of his heroines possess any sexual appetite, or if they do – like “Khaled” in Lara (who may be Gulnare in drag) they keep it suppressed. This is an omission which, in Beppo and Don Juan, Byron rectified. Conrad is, we are constantly assured, a bad man. It would be hard to be a corsair8 and stay virtuous; but Byron catalogues no specific wicked things that he’s done, to justify the poem’s last three famous words, “… a thousand crimes”. It’s not just that the poet is having his cake and eating it: he’s writing so fast and with so scant a regard for consistency and 7: Oberon, a Poem, from the German of Wieland (1798), pp.409-10. 8: Conrad isn’t a corsair: a corsair had a license from his government to raid enemy shipping. Thus Drake was a corsair. Conrad serves no government, and is therefore a pirate.

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conviction that he doesn’t think. It shows a contempt for his readership which we often see Byron expressing: on January 10th 1815, a week after his wedding, he writes to Thomas Moore: ... Now is your time; ... I have tired the rascals (i.e. the public) with my Harrys and Larrys, Pilgrims and Pirates. Nobody but Sy has done any thing worth a slice of bookseller’s pudding; and he has not luck enough to be found out in doing a good thing. Now, Tom, is thy time ...9

It was the Edinburgh Review which put it best: … the character of the hero is needlessly loaded in the description with crimes and vices of which his conduct affords no indication. He is spoken of as an abandoned and unfeeling ruffian – and he uniformly comports himself as a perfect pattern of tenderness and humanity. Nay, he even carries his generosity a good deal farther than, we believe, the most moral of his readers would think necessary – for our own part, at least, we do not hesitate to profess that we should have very little scruple about taking the life of any worthy gentleman over night, who had put every thing in order for impaling us in the morning.10

Byron may have been embarrassed by the inconsistent way in which he had portrayed his Corsair; perhaps he read the AntiJacobin and the Edinburgh, and their criticisms may have made him add the long notes which he added to the eighth edition, and other, shorter notes which he added to later editions. These constitute strange example of his fearless use of historical evidence: anxious to refute suggestions that Conrad is an unconvincing pirate, he argues “That the point of honour which is represented in one instance of Conrad’s character has not been carried beyond the bounds of probability.” He then quotes the case of Archbishop Blackbourne (16581743), of whom “report has even asserted he was a BUCCANEER: and that one of his brethren in that profession having asked, on his arrival in England, what had become of his old chum, Blackbourne, was answered, he is archbishop of York”. Apart from rumour, there is no evidence at all for the idea that Blackbourne – as opposed to Blackbeard – was a pirate; but Byron, having paraded it, then solemnly queries it, asking where Blackbourne could have acquired his classical learning? Prior to that he has quoted the case of Jean Lafitte, a modern Louisiana pirate, who on one occasion showed clemency to an old acquaintance who had come to 9: BLJ IV 252-3. 10: Edinburgh Review, April 1814, p. 220: The Romantics Reviewed, II 859.

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capture him. He follows it up with two more historical quotations, giving instances of wicked men who had been short in stature (as Conrad is), afflicted with limps (as Conrad is), and curt of speech (as Conrad is): as if being short, lame and laconic were normally barriers to wickedness. The effect of these four pieces of non-evidence is so odd – they cast no light at all on The Corsair – that the suspicion arises that Byron is being satirical – waving his historical “proofs” before our eyes and defying us to point out, like the child in Hans Andersen, that they constitute no “proofs” at all. Our bemusement at Byron’s joke, if that’s what it is, almost blinds to the deeper objection: that The Corsair is not a historical document but a work of complete poetic fiction, to be judged by different standards than, for example, a History of the Great Pirates. Byron’s notes (especially the one on Blackbourne, which proves nothing at all) only demonstrate that tough men on the seas often show that they have conscience and charisma – not that they are closet gays with deep-lying urges to kill themselves. Byron’s double game – to assert Conrad’s villainy, yet to give no evidence of it, but rather the reverse – shows in the sharpest focus the contempt he felt for his female readers, who must be titillated with a suspicion of sin, but reassured by the last line that, morally, all’s well. Despite his avowed contempt for professional scribblers, it also shows him to be a masterly manipulator of the market.

BYRON’S RELIGION VERSUS BYRON’S WOMEN

In September 1811 Byron’s Cambridge friend Francis Hodgson was about to become a Church of England deacon. Byron decided to challenge him. The decision brought forth from him a flow of uncharacteristically coherent rhetoric: … the basis of your religion is injustice; the Son of God, the pure, the immaculate, the innocent, is sacrificed for the guilty. This proves His heroism; but no more does away with man’s guilt than a schoolboy’s volunteering to be flogged for another would exculpate the dunce from negligence, or preserve him from the rod. You degrade the Creator, in the first place, by making Him a begetter of children; and in the next you convert Him into a tyrant over an immaculate and injured Being, who is sent into existence to suffer death for the benefit of some millions of scoundrels, who, after all, seem as likely to be damned as ever. As to miracles, I agree with Hume that it is more probable men should lie or be deceived, than that things out of the course of nature should so happen. Mahomet wrought miracles, Brothers the prophet had proselytes, and so would Breslau, the conjurer, had he lived in the time of Tiberius. Besides, I trust that God is not a Jew, but the God of all mankind; and, as you allow that a virtuous Gentile may be saved, you do away the necessity of being a Jew or a Christian. I do not believe in any revealed religion, because no religion is revealed; and if it pleases the Church to damn me for not allowing a nonentity, I throw myself on the mercy of the ‘Great First Cause, least understood,’ who must do what is most proper; though I conceive He never made anything to be tortured in another life, whatever it may in this. I will neither read pro nor con. God would have made His will known without books, considering how very few could read them when Jesus of Nazareth lived, had it been His pleasure to ratify any peculiar mode of worship. As to your immortality, if people are to live, why die? And our carcases, which are to rise again, are they worth raising? I hope, if mine is, that I shall have a better pair of legs than I have moved on these two-andtwenty years, or I shall be sadly behind in the squeeze into Paradise. Did you ever read ‘Malthus on Population?’ If he be right, war and pestilence are our best friends, to save us from being eaten alive, in this ‘best of all possible worlds.’1 Unpublished.

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I will write, read, and think no more; indeed, I do not wish to shock your prejudices by saying all I do think. Let us make the most of life, and leave dreams to Emanuel Swedenborg.2

Hodgson, perhaps sensing that Byron’s motive was not truly theological (“You degrade the Creator … by making Him a begetter of children”: surely that’s one function of a Creator?), but that he was trying to stir things, answered: My dear Byron / Your last letter has unfeignedly grieved me. Believing, as I do from my heart, that you would be better & happier by thoroughly examining the evidences for Christianity, how can I hear you say, you will not read any book on the subject, without being pained? But God bless you under all circumstances. I will say no more. Only do not talk of “shocking my prejudices”, & of “wishing to see me before I am a deacon” – I wish to see you at all times; & as to our different opinions we can easily keep them to ourselves. Adieu to the subject! with this sincere prayer – May God teach you so to live that you may die full of hope, & be forever happy in a nobler world – I write this letter in the midst of hurry & parting from my friends. I can only therefore say a few words more – & those upon points of the utmost interest to us both – You say nothing of your poems, or of sending the proofsheets to No. 8 Lincoln’s Inn – If you do not go to press before we meet, which I anticipate our doing with joy, you can order them to be sent to me at Cambridge, or rather to us both while you are there; and I trust you will stay with us as long as you possibly can. Pray look in the last Months Review (that is, the one published in the 1st. of this Month) & read your own remarks on Gell. It is thought probable that he will answer them & if so I trust we shall be able to mob him together – Thanks for your poetry – my [above address:] only objection to it is, that there is too Little of it – Pray read me More. – But the time for [below address:] Punning 1: Voltaire, Candide. 2: B. to Francis Hodgson, September 13th 1811: (text from Memoir of the Rev. Francis Hodgson, B.D. (Macmillan, 1878) I 202-4; BLJ II 97).

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Byron’s Religion versus Byron’s Women will be when we join at Cambridge. Then, then, my friend, Pun-ica te quantes attollet gloria Rebus!3

Modern Christian apologists, undeterred by this exchange, will go to any lengths to enlist Byron into their ranks. Here’s a note by Bernard Beatty listing what he claims are some of Byron’s later pro-Catholic statements: E.g. ‘When I turn thirty – I will turn devout – I feel a great vocation that way in Catholic churches’ (Byron’s Letters and Journals, Leslie Marchand (ed.) (12 vols., London, 1973-91), vol. 5, p. 208, to Murray, 9th April, 1817). ‘I have often wished I had been borne a Catholic’ (Medwin’s Conversations of Lord Byron, Ernest J. Lovell Jr., (ed.) (Princeton, 1966), p. 80). ‘I incline very much, myself, to the Catholic doctrines (Letters and Journals, vol. 9, p. 118, to Moore, 8th March, 1822). There is more evidence of this kind but also, of course, there is evidence of Byron’s unbelief and of his moralised Deism.4

“… of course”, there is no small amount of such evidence, to say nothing of his “beliefs” in Calvinism, Islam, Zoroastrianism, Socinianism, and so on: and in any case, each of Beatty’s quotations looks quite different in context. The first is in fact Do you think I would not have shot myself last year – had I not luckily recollected that Mrs. Clermont & Lady Noel & all the old women in England would have been delighted – besides the agreeable “Lunacy” of “the “Crowner’s Quest” – – and the regrets of two or three {or} half a dozen? Be assured – that I would live for two reasons – or more – there are one or two people whom I have to put out of the world – & as many into it – before I {can} “depart in peace” if I do so before – I have not fulfilled my mission. – Besides when I turn thirty – I will turn devout – I feel a great vocation that way – in Catholic churches – & when I hear the Organ. –5 3: Francis Hodgson to B., September 18th 1811 (text from NLS Ms.43447). He puns on Aeneid, IV 48-9: “Allied with Trojan arms, how far may not our Punic fame extend in deeds of power?” 4: Bernard Beatty, Byron’s Don Juan, (Barnes and Noble, 1985), p.214, n48. 5: Text from NLS Ms.43489 f.196.

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The Organ is as efficacious as the church. He will turn Catholic – after he’s settled a few scores. The second goes I have often wished I had been born [sic] a Catholic. That purgatory of theirs is a comfortable doctrine; I wonder the reformers gave it up, or did not substitute something as consolatory in its room. It is an improvement on the transmigration, Shelley, which all your wiseacre philosophers taught.

Just in order to believe in purgatory, he wishes he’d been born a Catholic? So why doesn’t he convert now? And the third, I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. As a proof, I am educating my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a convent of Romagna; for I think people can never have enough of religion, if they are to have any. I incline, myself, very much to the Catholic doctrines; but if I am to write a drama, I must make my characters speak as I conceive them likely to argue.

He educated his illegimate daughter in a convent, not from belief, but to ensure her future respectability on the Italian marriage-market. And we notice “… if they are to have any”: he’d rather they had none. Byron’s pro-Catholic statements are always delivered with a certain airiness – giving him ample room to withdraw them. When he tries to express serious “religious” thoughts, (a) he borrows someone else’s ideas, and (b) he hectors us, as in the stanzas on St Peter’s in Childe Harold IV: Not by its fault – but thine: our outward sense Is but of gradual grasp – and as it is That what we have of feeling most intense Outstrips our faint expression; even so this Outshining and o’erwhelming edifice Fools our fond gaze, and Greatest of the great Defies at first our Nature’s littleness, Till growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our Spirits to the size of that they contemplate. Then pause, and be enlightened; there is more In such a survey than the sating gaze Of wonder pleased, or awe which would adore The worship of the place, or the mere praise

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Byron’s Religion versus Byron’s Women Of Art and its great Masters, who could raise What former Time – nor Skill – nor Thought could plan; The fountain of Sublimity displays Its depth, and thence may draw the Mind of Man Its golden sands, and learn what great Conceptions can. (CHP IV sts.158-9)

He’s been wondering how to describe the effect of the building, and has in desperation paraphrased and expanded his favourite guide-book, Joseph Forsyth’s Remarks on Antiquities … in Italy, p.180: “The cupola is glorious. Viewed in its design, its altitude, or even its decoration; viewed either as a whole or as a part, it enchants the eye, it satisfies the taste, it expands the soul”. What Harold’s “great Conceptions” are, we’re not told – they seem to have little or no relevance to the teachings and suffering of Christ. Byron understood the Christian concepts of humility and unworthiness, but expressed them facetiously: God help us all! God help me too! I am God knows as helpless as the Devil can wish – And not a whit more difficult to damn Than is to bring to land a late-hooked fish, Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb – Not that I’m fit for such a noble dish – As one day will be that immortal Fry Of almost every body born to die. – (The Vision of Judgement, st.15)

When he writes an Ave Maria, it’s not clear that he puts a Catholic interpretation on it: Ave Maria! ’tis the hour of prayer! Ave Maria! ’tis the hour of Love! Ave Maria! may our Spirits dare Look up to thine and to thy Son’s above! Ave Maria! oh that face so fair! Those downcast eyes beneath the Almighty dove – What though ’tis but a pictured Image strike – That Painting is no Idol, ’tis too like. – – – Some kinder Casuists are pleased to say – In nameless print – that I have no devotion; But set those persons down with me to pray, And you shall see who has the properest notion Of getting into Heaven the shortest way; My Altars are the Mountains and the Ocean,

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Earth, Air, Stars – All that springs from the great Whole Who hath produced, and will receive the Soul. (Don Juan III sts.103-4)

The second stanza’s “moralised Deism” is at odds with the first stanza’s conventional piety. The “great Whole” to whom he’s offering up his Catholic prayer doesn’t seem to be the Catholic god. Is Byron momentarily lapsing back into the pseudo-Wordsworthian “Byron” of Childe Harold III? Byron is much more whole-hearted when he blasphemes. The eating, in Don Juan II, of Juan’s tutor, Pedrillo (“who many languages did understand”) in the longboat of the “Trinidada”, is a multiple parody of the Holy Spirit and of communion. When in The Vision of Judgement, quoted already, “Bob” Southey is knocked off his cloud by St Peter, and falls into his lake (“for there he did not drown”) so that George III can enter heaven, it’s a parody of the Suffering and Atonement of Christ. Southey claims, in his Vision, an intimacy with God the Father, both with His political and literary judgements (He only approves of poetry which is sycophantic to Him). “Bob” is thus, in his dunking, a worthy version of the Sacrificial Lamb. He gets wet, so that King George may have a glimpse, at least, of bliss. Cain (written in 1821, simultaneously with The Vision) is based entirely on the idea of a malicious, unpredictable god, tyrannical even over his own: Lucifer:

But He! so wretched in his height, So restless in his wretchedness, must still Create, and re-create – perhaps he’ll make One day a Son unto himself – as he Gave you a father – and if he so doth, Mark me! that Son will be a Sacrifice. (Cain I i 161-6)

An idea which echoes Byron’s 1811 letter to Hodgson with which this essay begins: “You degrade the Creator, in the first place, by making Him a begetter of children; and in the next you convert Him into a tyrant over an immaculate and injured Being, who is sent into existence to suffer death for the benefit of some millions of scoundrels, who, after all, seem as likely to be damned as ever”. William Gifford made sure that these lines weren’t printed. —————

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Religion was a subject about which the protean Byron – sceptical even of his own scepticism – could never be consistent: So little do we know what we’re about in This world, I doubt if doubt itself be doubting. (Don Juan IX 17 7-8)

The Leap of Faith, which alone can solve this dilemma, was one he seemed incapable of making. Much later in the century, his widow told her chronicler and champion, Harriet Beecher Stowe: ‘Lord Byron believed in eternal punishment fully: for though he reasoned against Christianity as it is commonly received, he could not reason himself out of it; and I think it made him desperate. He used to say, “The worst of it is I do believe.” Had he seen God as I see him, I am sure his heart would have relented.’6

While Julius Millingen writes, about Byron’s last days at Missolonghi: It is with infinite regret that I must state, that although I seldom left Lord Byron’s pillow during the latter part of his illness, I did not hear him make any, even the smallest, mention of religion. At one moment I heard him say: “Shall I sue for mercy?” After a long pause he added: “Come, come, no weakness! Let’s be a man to the last.” 7

I’d like to suggest that Byron is much better at describing the emotions and ideas inspired by the mysteries of women than describing those inspired by the mysteries of religion. ————— He announces his theme of Woman as a Mystery in the fourteenth canto of Don Juan: “Petticoat Influence” is a grand reproach, Which even those who obey would fain be thought 6: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lady Byron Vindicated (Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, 1870), p.164. 7: Julius Millingen, Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece, London, 1831, quoted HVSV p.591.

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To fly from, as from hungry pikes a roach; But since beneath it upon earth we’re brought By various joltings of Life’s Hackney Coach, I for one venerate a petticoat – A Garment of a mystical sublimity, No matter whether russet, silk, or dimity. Much I respect, and much I have adored, In my young days, that chaste and goodly veil Which holds a treasure like a Miser’s hoard, And more attracts by all it doth conceal – A golden Scabbard on a Damasque Sword – A loving letter with a mystic Seal – A cure for Grief – for what can ever rankle, Before a petticoat and peeping ankle? – (Don Juan XIV sts.26-7)

Irony is at work here: “… that chaste and goodly veil” refers back to the petticoat, which Byron wasn’t famous for respecting; but it’s a defensive irony, because it’s clear that no matter how many petticoats he may have lifted or removed, he remains in awe of them. He isn’t gatè or blasè yet, as he threatened to make Juan become.8 In Don Juan, the heroines normally go in ranked pairs: Julia has her maid Antonia, Haidee has her subordinate Zoe, Gulbeyaz has Baba, who’s a sort of honorary woman, and Catherine the Great has Miss Protasov. But at Norman Abbey there are three equal heroines. Lady Adeline says, and sings, quite a lot, but does nothing: the Duchess of Fitz-Fulke says nothing, but does at least one very important thing: and Aurora Raby neither says, nor does, anything at all. What all three have in common is that Juan is puzzled in his attempt to understand them. All three are, in their different ways, “spectral”, as Gavin Hopps would say: they embody the “mystical sublimity” of which Byron speaks above. Lady Adeline is one of the most interesting characters in the whole poem, and gets one of its most important prose notes. We see her here through Juan’s eyes: Though this was most expedient on the whole – And usual – Juan, when he cast a glance

8: See B. to Murray, February 16th 1821 (text from NLS Ms.43492; BLJ VIII 779).

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Byron’s Religion versus Byron’s Women On Adeline, while playing her grand role, Which she went through as though it were a dance (Betraying only now and then her soul By a look scarce perceptibly askance Of weariness, or scorn); began to feel Some doubt how much of Adeline was real; So well she acted – all and every part By turns – with that vivacious versatility Which many people take for want of heart; They err; ‘tis merely what is called Mobility, * A thing of temperament and not of Art, Though seeming so from its supposed facility – And false – though true; for surely they’re sincerest Who are strongly acted on by what is nearest? – * In French, Mobilité. I am not sure that mobility is English – but it is expressive of a quality which rather belongs to other climates – though it is sometimes seen to a great extent in our own. It may be defined as an excessive susceptibility of immediate impressions, at the same time without losing the past, and is – though sometimes apparently useful to the possessor – a most painful and unhappy attribute. – – – (Don Juan XVI sts.967 and authorial note)

Adeline’s life is a non-stop improvisation, done with the greatest style (a bit like Byron’s, both in life and verse): but all the while she seems somewhere else (just as he does). Fitz-Fulke is also acting a role, while being herself somewhere else, but her role-play, unlike Adeline’s, has a well-defined, specific objective. We don’t see her just through Juan’s eyes, but through his nostrils and his hand: But still the Shade remained – the blue eyes glared – And rather variably for stoney Death – Yet one thing rather good the Grave had spared – The Ghost had a remarkably sweet breath; A struggling curl showed he had been fair-haired – A red lip, with two rows of pearls beneath, Gleamed forth, as through the Casement’s ivy Shroud The Moon peeped just escaped from a grey Cloud. – And Juan, puzzled but still curious, thrust

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His other arm forth – wonder upon wonder! – It pressed upon a hard but glowing bust, Which beat as if there was a warm heart under; He found, as people on most trials must, That he had made at first a silly blunder – And that in his confusion he had caught Only the wall, instead of what he sought. (Don Juan XVI sts.121-2)

Aurora, on the other hand, seems not to perform at all, and makes Juan feel self-conscious just by looking at him, even as he becomes more conscious of her: … he caught Aurora’s eye on his, And something like a smile upon her cheek; Now this he really rather took amiss – In those who rarely smile, their smiles bespeak A strong eternal motive – and in this Smile of Aurora’s there was naught to pique Or Hope, or Love, with any of the wiles Which some pretend to trace in Ladies’ smiles. ’Twas a mere quiet smile of Contemplation, Indicative of some surprize and pity; And Juan grew Carnation with vexation, Which was not very wise, and still less witty, Since he had gained, at least, her observation – A most important outwork of the City – As Juan should have known, had not his Senses By last Night’s Ghost been driven from their defences. But what was bad, she did not blush in turn, Nor seem embarrassed – quite the contrary; Her aspect was, as usual, still – not stern – And she withdrew, but cast not down, her eye – Yet grew a little pale – with what? Concern? I know not – but her Colour ne’er was high, Though sometimes faintly flushed, and always Clear, As deep Seas in a Sunny Atmosphere. (Don Juan XVI sts.92-4)

To give Aurora precedence over the other two, to the extent of devoting seventy-four pages to her, as Bernard Beatty does,9 seems to 9: Beatty, op. cit., pp.137-211.

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show a determination to ignore Byron’s careful tripartite construction. In fact Adeline occupies a lot more of the narrative than either Aurora or Fitz-Fulke, parts of it being seen from her viewpoint. Aurora is depicted ambiguously, in part from the narrator’s objective viewpoint: These Seals upon her Wax made no impression – Such was her coldness, or her Self-possession.10 – (Don Juan XV 57 7-8)

… in part from Adeline’s jealous viewpoint: The devil was in the girl – could it be pride? Or modesty – or absence – or inanity? Heaven knows – but Adeline’s malicious eyes Sparkled with her successful prophecies … (Don Juan XV 78 5-8)

“Coldness”, “Self-possession”, “modesty – or absence – or inanity”: Aurora is, in her idiom, as inscrutable as Adeline – and since she performs no act, and since Byron doesn’t allow a single word to escape her, she’s even harder to read than Adeline. To write, as Bernard Beatty does, Aurora is untainted and the terminus of Byron’s comedy, whatever happens to it in the future, because she alone can again connect Juan and the poem trustingly to their existence and restore what has been lost.11

… is to show over-confidence both in Aurora and in one’s understanding of the direction in which the unfinished poem would have gone. Byron’s way of depicting women and of the effect they have on men, has matured, not just since the Medoras, Gulnares and the Leilas of his popular work, but since the start of Don Juan. This is partly because Juan has become less naïve and less overwhelmed by the proximity of women since Julia and Haidee (though he remains overwhelmed), but also because Byron has encountered Teresa Guiccioli and Lady Blessington, both 10: These Seals upon her Wax made no impression – / Such was her coldness, or her Self-possession: one model for Aurora whom no-one has mentioned is Anne Elliott in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, which had been published by Murray in 1818. The difference is that where we know Anne, behind her stoic façade, to be full of loneliness and love, B. keeps Aurora’s real feelings hidden, as if he cannot read them himself. She is of course younger than Anne. 11: Beatty, op. cit., pp.198-9.

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deeper and more complex people than any of his Venetian women, even than Marianna Segati or Margherita Cogni. Not only do the three Norman Abbey heroines make an interesting contrast, but the comic scenes Byron writes for them and Juan are threedimensional, and observed in greater detail, than the farcical episodes in Julia’s bedroom (Canto I) or in the Harem (Canto VI). Look at how, in Canto XVI, each of the five characters at breakfast reacts to Juan’s entry into the room, after he has seen a ghost: And when he walked down into the saloon, He sate him pensive o’er a dish of Tea, Which he perhaps had not discovered soon, Had it not happened scalding hot to be, Which made him have recourse unto his Spoon; So much distrait he was that all could see, That something was the matter – Adeline The first – but what, she could not well divine. She looked, and saw him pale – and turned as pale Herself – then hastily looked down, and muttered Something, but what’s not stated in my tale; Lord Henry said – his muffin was ill-buttered; The Dutchess of FitzFulke played with her veil, And looked at Juan hard, but nothing uttered; Aurora Raby, with her large dark eyes, Surveyed him with a kind of calm surprize. But seeing him all cold and silent still, And every body wondering more or less, Fair Adeline enquired “If he were ill?” He started – and said “Yes – No – rather, Yes –” The family physician had great skill, And, being present now, began to express His readiness to feel his pulse, and tell The cause – but Juan said “He was quite well.” – “Quite well – yes – no” – these answers were mysterious, And yet his looks appeared to sanction both, However they might savour of delirious; Something like illness of a sudden growth Weighed on his Spirit, though by no means serious; But for the rest, as he himself seemed loath To state the case, it might be ta’en for granted, It was not the Physician that he wanted. – (Don Juan XVI sts.30-3)

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The line about Lord Henry and his muffin is a new kind of subtlety. Just as Byron was developing a truly complex and sophisticated style of comic writing, and an even deeper way of portraying women, he went to Greece, and died.

BYRON’S LIBRARY

Our information about Byron’s library comes from the sale catalogues, of which there are are officially three: one for July 8th-9th 1813 (a sale which didn’t occur, because Byron didn’t go abroad as he’d intended); one for April 5th-6th 1816, which did occur because he did go abroad; and one for July 6th 1827, three years after his death: but there is something strange about the 1827 sale catalogue, which leads me to suspect that there are in fact four catalogues. The sales were in all three cases organised and catalogued by R.H.Evans of Pall Mall, London’s leading auctioneer: a man called Sotheby ran him a distant second. A famous Whig, he had been educated at Westminster School, as had Hobhouse, except that Evans was a generation earlier. In a modern perspective, the most striking feature of the 1813 catalogue is the presence of Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, works to which Byron never alludes. Neither work was published by Murray (who did publish Persuasion, another novel to which Byron, still, never refers). No Jane Austen occurs in the 1816 catalogue, so perhaps he gave Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility to Annabella. There are 272 books, sets or lots (and two artefacts) in the 1813 catalogue, 374 (and nine artefacts) in the 1816 catalogue, and 233 (with no artefacts) in the 1827 catalogue. The relationship of the catalogues to the actual content of Byron’s library is something we have to take on trust, as is their relationship, in turn, with what he actually read. It’s possible, for example, to make some deductions about books he didn’t sell: a first edition (1786) of Beckford’s Vathek (one of his favourite books), appears in 1813, but 1816 the one for sale is an 1815 edition, with the notes by Samuel Henley abbreviated. We may guess that Byron, finding the new Vathek unsatisfactory, sold it, and kept the first edition for his bedtime reading.

A version of the paper given in absentia at the IBS conference at Boston in 2010. See also The Phantom Book Sale Catalogue, 2013 NBSR, pp.86-91; rptd BJ No. 41, 2013, pp.49-55.

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The 1816 sale, with 383 items, fetched £723 12s 6d; the 1827 sale, with 233 items, fetched £159 9s 6d. They would have fetched much more if Byron ever signed his books, but, as with residences (he hated to be thought of as possessing a home, and was always passing through on his way to somewhere else), he seems to hate leaving evidence that he’d possessed and read a book. He only even annotated three surviving books: an Italian translation of de Staël’s Corinne, in which he writes a love-note to Teresa, and Foscolo’s Iacopo Ortis, in which his notes are such that one longs for more.1 On one of his own books – English Bards – he left voluminous notes. Sometimes he drew lines down the margins. There are no English language Bibles anywhere in the catalogues (there’s a Greek New Testament in the 1816 catalogue): Byron claimed to read a chapter of the Bible a day, and may be presumed never to have sold one. His Bible had been given to him by Augusta. If we assume that anything in the 1816 catalogue but not in the 1813 catalogue has been bought by Byron during the intervening years, we can deduce that Byron made a thorough study of Italian and its literature during those years. He bought two complete copies of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso between 1813 and 1816, three copies of Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata (one an 1813 set), plus at least two copies of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and assisted himself by learning Italian systematically with grammars and dictionaries. He also bought Black’s Life of Tasso, a thirteen-volume Machiavelli, and Goldoni’s Memoirs. To get it all in perspective he bought an 1813 edition of Sismondi, de la Littérature du Midi. There is one Petrarch in the 1813 catalogue, and two different ones in the 1816. The earliest specific references to Ariosto and Tasso in Byron’s work are the Genevra sonnets, and parts of The Corsair,2 both written in the second half of 1813, after the aborted sale. It’s therefore misleading to assume that Byron’s interest in the Italian tradition on which his ottava rima poems rest was acquired in Italy. The build-up started before he even thought of leaving England (unless he planned his exile in advance of having an excuse for it). Two more important post-1813 acquisitions are Rousseau’s Confessions and a complete Rabelais. Byron sells his complete Shakespeare before

1: Corinna is in the Biblioteca Classense at Ravenna, Ortis at the Carl H. Pforzheimer Library, New York, and English Bards in the National Library of Scotland. There’s a mouth-watering rumour that someone possesses Byron’s annotated copy of Vathek. 2: The Corsair, epigraph (for Tasso) and line 439 (for Ariosto).

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going abroad, and appears not to buy another, though this is hard to believe, and fuels further suspicion of pre-sale pilfering in 1827 (see below). The most recent book to be sold in 1816 is Francis Hare Naylor’s History of Germany, published that year. It is a source for Werner. The oldest book in any of the “authentic” catalogues is a complete Horace in folio: “Horatii Opera, cum Quatuor Commentariis”, printed in Venice in 1509. The fact that it is described by way of caution with the words, “stained, cuts” may indicate how well-used it is. It goes for a measly eight shillings (40p!!). Again, Byron should have signed it. The second oldest is by the second century grammarian Aulus Gellius; it is printed in 1515 by the Venetian printer Aldus Manutius. It too goes for eight shillings. The highest price paid in either sale is the massive £35 14s put down for Cobbett’s Parliamentary Debates, from the commencement in 1803 to 1815, in 31 volumes, which is bought by “Giles”. The second highest is £30, paid by “Fletcher” (of 12 Hereford Street), for the Large Plates to Boydell’s Shakspeare, engraved by the first Artists, VERY BEAUTIFUL PROOF IMPRESSIONS, bound in red morocco. The lowest price paid in 1816 is 6d, for the Maps to Cellarius’s Geography. The highest price paid in the 1827 sale is £6 7s 6d, given by “Borne” for Coxe’s 1818 Life of the Duke of Marlborough (see Don Juan III 90 68). The lowest is 6d, paid for Ricci’s l’Italiade and Keate’s Account of the Pellew Islands. The four Southey works in the catalogues are Kirke White’s Remains, Madoc, Roderick, and the Life of Wesley. There is no Joan of Arc, Thalaba, Kehama, Waterloo, or Vision of Judgement. A similar oddity is seen in relation to Scott’s poems. The Lay of the Last Minstrel appears in both the 1813 and the 1816 catalogue; while Marmion, the earlier poem, appears only in the later 1816 catalogue. There are very few works by Byron himself in the catalogues. The 1813 catalogue has one copy of Childe Harold I and II, but none of the juvenile books, or of English Bards. The 1816 catalogue also contains (as the 1813 one could not have), fifteen copies of Thurston’s Illustrations to The Corsair, though none of The Corsair itself; some Plates to illustrate Lord Byron’s Poems; one copy of Lara; five copies of Hebrew Melodies; (including one in Nathan’s musical version); but no copies of The Giaour, The Bride of Abydos, The Siege of Corinth, or Parisina. The 1827 catalogue has one Werner, the Letter to Bowles on Pope, and a French Œuvres Complètes, but nothing else: again, pre-sale cherry-picking by Byron’s friends may be suspected. On January 29th 1825, with Byron dead, Hobhouse recorded:

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Byron’s Library Rode to London. Went to Hanson’s and with him to London docks to look over some goods of Byron’s, came from Genoa – found nine snuff boxes and a watch which I intend to apply for to have duty free – also five boxes of books – his library – poor fellow.

The books had been sent by Charles Barry, Byron’s banker in Genoa, custodian also of the poet’s three pet geese, whose lives he had saved at Michaelmas 1822. Evidence of “creaming-off” is to be found in the New Monthly Magazine for 1827 (XIX, pp.26-32), where Hobhouse writes that Byron read Montaigne in his (now Hobhouse’s) copy of the 1685 translation by Charles Cotton. There is no Montaigne in the 1827 sale catalogue. On March 31st 1817 Byron writes to Hobhouse, “I have bought several books which must be left for my bankers to forward to Engand – amongst others a complete Voltaire in 92 volumes …” (BLJ V 199). Ninety-two volumes would fill more than one box: but there is no complete Voltaire in the 1827 sale Catalogue. The books in the 1827 catalogue must have been either bought on the continent, or sent out by Murray and others. Murray bought nothing in the 1827 sale. The most striking absence in 1827 is that of the Waverley Novels, which we know Byron adored. The sole exception is Guy Mannering. Of Shelley’s poetry, we find just two copies of Prometheus Unbound. There are numerous other books absent from 1827 which we know Byron to have possessed. They include: Berni, Opere or similar title Boiardo, Opere or similar title Bowring, Specimens of the Russian Poets (BLJ XI 84-5) Byron, Admiral, Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (Hobhouse diary, Aug 3 1817, and Don Juan II 139, 8) Cantemir, The History of the Growth and Decline of the Othman Empire (Don Juan V 147, 7, and VI, 31, 5) Casti, Gli Animale Parlante Casti, Novelle Galanti (BLJ V 80) Casti, Il Poema Tartaro (one source for the Russian cantos in Don Juan) Dalyell, Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (source for the shipwreck in Don Juan II) De Tott, Memoirs (Don Juan VI, 31, 5) Hope, Anastasius (BLJ VII 138, 182)

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Laurence (tr. and ed.), The Book of Enoch The Prophet: An Apocryphal Production (source for Heaven and Earth) Lee, The Canterbury Tales (one source for Werner) Masson, Secret Memoirs of the Court of St. Petersburg (background to the St Petersburg cantos in Don Juan) Muratori, Cronica di Sanuto (one source for Marino Faliero) Pickersgill, The Three Brothers (alleged source for The Deformed Transformed) Sismondi, Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Âge (another source for Marino Faliero) Tully, A Narrative of Ten Years’ Residence at Tripoli in Africa (source for the interiors in Don Juan III) Taylor (tr. and ed.), The Description of Greece by Pausanias (BLJ V 74, 80; source for the demonology of Manfred) Ude, The French Cook (source for the feast at Norman Abbey) Here is yet more evidence that the 233 items in the 1827 Sale Catalogue do not represent the entire contents of the “five boxes” that Hobhouse and Hanson opened. Obviously Byron’s friends took what they wanted. The mystery deepens when we turn the page, for immediately after the 1827 sale of Byron’s library (or what’s left of it), there is printed the catalogue of the library of “A GENTLEMAN DECEASED” which it seems was sold at the same time as Byron’s. There are some strange features about it – not least in that its numbering picks up exactly where Byron’s leaves off. Byron’s ends at number 233 – it starts at number 234. Only twenty of its 571 items post-date 1824, the year of Byron’s death. One of them is an 1825 seven-volume set of his Works, another an 1826 complete Shakespeare, and another an 1826 Divine Comedy. Of the seventeen others, fourteen come in two blocks (381-90 and 677-80), irrespective of alphabetical order. The other three are the first item in 308, then 362 and 502. I include 1824 in the years Byron was alive, though he was only alive for four months of that year, and could have purchased or received few if any books at Missolonghi. A recent, and very useful book about R.H.Evans (Robert Harding Evans of Pall Mall, by Marc Vaulbert de Chantilly),3 reveals not only that 3: Vanity Press of Bethnal Green, 2002. It has the abortive 1813 Sale Catalogue as No.7 on p.1, the 1816 Sale Catalogue as No. 28 on p.3, and the 1827 Sale Catalogue as No.214 on p.16. Chantilly says that the GENTLEMAN’s library sale starts with No.1, but this is not so – it starts with No.234. The B.L. shelf mark of the relevant catalogue is S.C.EVANS 30.

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this sale was the only one of Evans’s in 1827 to feature two libraries, but that Evans rarely if ever sold two libraries on the same day. Several of his more massive sales of aristocratic libraries (one is tempted to say, “real aristocratic libraries”)4 continued for up to two weeks, dwarfing Byron’s library out of existence. The library of “A GENTLEMAN DECEASED” fetched £675 14s. Many other titles in the library of “A GENTLEMAN DECEASED” are identical to titles Byron sold in 1816, although with different dates, as would be natural. The first is Mitford’s History of Greece, which bizarrely duplicates one sold in 1816. The last is Bayle’s Historical Dictionary (duplicating a copy sold in 1816). Some actual editions are identical with those in Byron’s 1816 sale: there is a 1793 Montesquieu; an 1806 Milton’s Prose Works; an 1808 Lempriere’s Universal Biography; an 1806 Porson’s Aeschylus; an 1808, 18-volume Scott Dryden, and an 1814, 19-volume Scott Swift.5 Books in the “anonymous” section referred to in Don Juan are Dr Currie’s Life of Burns (see Don Juan III, 92, 4); the letters of Ninon de L’Enclos (see Don Juan V, 98, 9); and Knolles’ History of the Turks (see Don Juan V, 147, 7). Many Greek and Latin classics in the “anonymous” section are marked “Delphini”, that is, bowdlerised for the use of minors. Only two such are found in the authentic Byron sections, both, bizarrely, by Cicero, a writer not normally thought of as rude. Two editions in the “anonymous” section are by German scholars referred to by Byron at lines 75-8 of his 1812 satire Waltz: they are Heyne’s editions of Homer and Pindar, and Brunck’s editions of Aristophanes and of the Scholia Græca. Books in the “GENTLEMAN DECEASED” section which we would expect Byron to possess include Southey’s Joan of Arc and The Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo, Le Sage’s Diable Boiteux, La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims; Hudibras; the Rejected Addresses; and Otway’s Works. Three of the Italian authors whom we know Byron studied, but who are missing from the official “Byron’s Library” part of the catalogue, turn up in the library of “A GENTLEMAN DECEASED”: Tasso, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. There are several unByronic mathematical works, but no Waverley Novels, and no 92-volume Voltaire. Some of the “anonymous” books may 4: The sort with three copies of each book, “one for reading, one for display, and one for lending”. 5: The Zambelli Papers (B.L.Add.Mss.46878 f.67), reveal that this set was bought on July 16th 1823.

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be Byron’s, others not. Someone, somewhere, now in 2014, may possess Byron’s complete Voltaire, and his (incomplete) set of the Waverley Novels. An important name missing from all the catalogues is that of Alfieri. Lastly, the large number of religious books in the “anonymous” section might give us pause, especially we find among them a 1728 Tillotson’s Works, a 1751 Barrow’s Sermons, an 1808 Blair’s Sermons, and a 1727 South’s Sermons: and remember Don Juan, II, 165, 3-8: Much English I cannot pretend to speak, Learning that language chiefly from its preachers – Barrow, South, Tillotson, whom Every week I study – also Blair – the highest reachers Of Eloquence in piety and prose – I hate your Poets, so read None of those. –

For Tillotson, see also VII, 4, 3, where he’s placed in very distinguished company. The villain here would seem to be Hobhouse, who was terrified in case any rumour should seep out that Byron really was religious, and that this passage wasn’t a joke. On the day Byron’s death was announced (Friday May 14th 1824), these were his thoughts: I should have mentioned [that] at Mrs Leigh’s desire I called on her – she was in a afflicting condition. She gave me Fletcher’s letter to read, and I could not restrain my sorrow, but again burst out in uncontrollable lamentation: but when recovered I thought it right to engage Mrs Leigh not to communicate, to any but the nearest friends, one part of the letter, which mentioned that since Lord Byron’s fit on the fifteenth of February, he had placed on his breakfast table a bible every morning. This circumstance, which pleased his valet Fletcher, I was afraid might be mistaken for cowardice or hypocrisy,6 and I was anxious that no idle stories to his discredit should get abroad. I dare say that the bible was on his table – I have long recollected his having one near him – it was a volume given to him

6: B.’s increased interest in religion when in Greece is well-testified by James Kennedy and others. See Marchand III 1104-5 and 1125-7.

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by his sister,7 and I remember well seeing it on his table at Pisa in 1822; but, unless his mind was shaken by disease, I am confident he made no superstitious use of it – that is to say, I am confident that although he might have a general belief in its contents, he was not overcome by any religious terrors. He has often said to me, “It may be true – it is, as D’Alembert said, a grand peut-être”;8 but I own that I think he was rather inclined to take the opposite line of thinking when I saw him at Pisa, for when I remonstrated with him on the freedom of some of his later writing in that respect, he said, “What, are you canting?” He then protested he would tell his opinions boldly, let what would be the consequences. Both Burdett and Kinnaird were anxious as well as myself that no rumours prejudicial to his fame respecting his last moments should get abroad – and we therefore resolved to show the contents of Fletcher’s letters to Mr Murray and to his wife. .

Byron’s reputation as a blasphemer – possibly an atheist – was one of which Hobhouse was stern guardian. Such compromising authors as Barrow, Tillotson or South must be air-brushed from the record.

7: B. to Murray, 9 Oct 1821: “Send ... a common bible of a good legible print (bound in Russia) I have one – but as it was the last gift of my Sister (whom I shall probably never see again) I can only use it carefully” (BLJ VIII 237-8). 8: The phrase was not said by d’Alembert, but is attributed to Rabelais, on his death-bed: “Je m’en vais chercher un grand peut-être”. See CMP 186.

BYRON AND PLAGIARISM

There’s a point where plagiarism ceases to be plagiarism and becomes imaginative borrowing and creative adaptation. Where it’s opportunistic and, above all, unacknowledged, it’s plagiarism. Where it’s acknowledged, and, especially, where it improves on its source, its creative adaptation. I’m sure Holinshed would be delighted to see what Shakespeare made out of his Chronicles, or Musset to see what Renoir made out of Les Caprices de Marianne in La Règle du Jeu. Byron committed both kinds of literary theft at different parts of his career. He only acknowledged them when public exposure forced it out of him, and even then didn’t reveal all. Sometimes a borrowing may only reveal that Byron has just been reading a good book, and that some phrases have percolated into whatever he’s writing at the time. Thus several phrases from Smollett’s Roderick Random are to be found in Beppo: “Covent Garden Piazzas” (Chap.LII) “a Turkey-Merchant” (Chap.LIII) and to “Monmouth Street” (Chaps.LIII and LX) suggest that he may have been reading Random at the time of writing his Venetian satire.1 He was certainly buried deep in the Waverley Novels when he wrote The Vision of Judgement, which contains at least eleven phrases from them: “‘What’s your wull?’” (l.467) is from The Antiquary, as is “Shadow of a Shade” (l.651), which also occurs in Guy Mannering; the reference to King Alfonso (l.807) is also from The Antiquary. The spelling “Sathan” as opposed to “Satan” is found in Ivanhoe, Guy Mannering and Old Mortality. You wouldn’t know this from any printed editions, however, which always change Byron’s manuscript spelling to the more conventional one – just as they prefer their own “Judgment” to his “Judgement”. “… fairly overcrowed” (l.758) is from Rob Roy and The Bride of Lammermuir. “… champ clos” (l.256) is from The Monastery; and there are other

Unpublished. 1: Beppo 97, 3 (Turkey-Merchant); 5, 3 (Monmouth Street); 5, 7-8 (Covent Garden Piazza). Monmouth Street and “rag-fair” (Beppo 5, 3) also occur in Fielding’s Amelia, XI VII.

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echoes.2 His addiction to Scott’s novels is expressed in a letter to Scott himself of January 12th 1822: To me those novels have so much of “Auld lang syne” (I was bred a canny Scot till ten years old) that I never move without them – and when I removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day – and sent on my library before – they were the only books that I kept by me – although I already knew them by heart.3

It was when he “removed from Ravenna to Pisa the other day” that he’d finished – that is, written three-quarters of – The Vision of Judgement. This is not plagiarism, but porosity. Another “borrowing” – probably more deliberate – shows Byron killing not two but three birds with a single satirical stone, consisting of three short words: We learn from Horace, Homer sometimes sleeps; We feel without him, Wordsworth sometimes wakes, To show with what complacency he creeps, With his dear “Waggoners,” around his lakes; He wishes for “a boat” to sail the deeps – Of Ocean? No, of Air, and then he makes Another outcry for “a little boat,” And drivels Seas to set it well afloat. – (Don Juan III st.98)

“a little boat” is in theory from Wordsworth’s Peter Bell: “But through the clouds I’ll never float / Until I have a little Boat, / Shaped like the crescent-moon”. However, the phrase is not just from Peter Bell: it occurs twice (lines 344 and 363) in Shelley’s Alastor, and no fewer than nine times in Book XI of Southey’s Thalaba the Destroyer. If, therefore, any one of the poets satirised complained (none of them did: not even Shelley), Byron could point to either of the other two as the real objects of his derision.

2: See Cochran, The Vision of Judgement and The Waverley Novels, Notes and Queries, June 1992, pp.168-72. 3: BLJ IX 86-7.

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Vathek and Byron’s Orientalism Byron loved Beckford’s book, and a copy was found in his effects at Missolonghi. When on May 18th 1818 he writes to Murray “My foot slipped in getting into my Gondola to set out (owing to the accursed slippery steps of their palaces) and in I flounced like a Carp4 …” he is quoting and inverting Vathek, whose protagonist “flounced from the water like a carp” when his mother breaks in upon his sexual activities in the bath.5 The famous last three words of The Corsair … He left a Corsair’s name to other times, Linked with one virtue, and a thousand crimes.

… are from the last paragraph of Vathek: Thus the Caliph Vathek, who, for the sake of empty pomp and forbidden power, had sullied himself with a thousand crimes, became a prey to grief without end, and remorse without mitigation; whilst the humble and despised Gulchenrouz passed whole ages in undisturbed tranquillity, and the pure happiness of childhood.

Whether Byron was aware of it or not, this seems straightforward plagiarism, with the phrase so sensationally placed in both works. I don’t know that anybody pointed this out – if they did so, it would indicate that they’d read Vathek, a book which polite people didn’t read. But, whether or not embarrassed, Byron alters his game in The Siege of Corinth: to lines 598-604 of that poem … There is a light cloud by the moon – ’Tis passing, and will pass full soon – If, by the time its vapoury sail Hath ceased her shaded orb to veil, Thy heart within thee is not changed, Then God and man are both avenged …

… he appends a note:

4: BLJ VI 133. 5: Vathek (ed. Lonsdale), p.93.

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Notice the assumption that he should know “the precise page of the French” without looking it up. Siege was published early in 1816, some time after the other four Turkish Tales. Vathek was, by coincidence, reprinted later in the year, with its notes pruned. Byron’s admission of regard came late, and was not full enough as a revelation of his indebtedness: for he, who elsewhere expressed his pride at always having been “on the spot,”6 took so many of his oriental details from Beckford’s book, with which he had been familiar since well before his first eastern journey, that one can only blink. He refers to Vathek (and several other books) in letters to Murray, asserting the oriental authenticity of (in this case) The Bride of Abydos: Certainly7 – do you suppose that no one but the Galileans are acquainted with Adam & Eve & Cain & Noah – why I might have had Solomon & Abraham & David & even Moses on the other – when you know that Zuleika is the Persian poetical name for Potiphers wife on whom & Joseph there is a long poem – in the Persian this will not surprise you – if you want authority – look at Jones – D’Herbelot – Vathek – or the Notes to the Arabian Ns – & if you think it necessary model this into a note. – –8 Dear Sir – I send you a note for the ignorant – but I really wonder at finding you among them. – I don’t care one lump of Sugar for my poetry – but for my costume – and my correctness on those points (of which I think the funeral was a proof) I will combat lustily. – yrs. ever B9 6: See Stephen Cheeke, Byron and Place (Palgrave 2003). 7: Murray (the letter is missing) seems to be querying Selim’s use of “Cain” at Bride 686. B. appends a note. 8: B. to Murray, late 1813: (text from NLS Ms.43487; LJ II 282; BLJ III 164) 9: B. to Murray, late 1813: (text from NLS Ms.43487; BLJ III 164-5).

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Sir William Jones, Barthelemy d’Herbelot and the Arabian Nights are there for padding. He need only have had Vathek and consult its notes (by Samuel Henley, its translator),10 in order to understand the following oriental concepts and vocabulary: houris (Giaour 486, Bride 147: Vathek p.125); genii (Giaour 385: Vathek p.125); the Nightingale and the Rose (Giaour 22 and n: Vathek p.143); the word “Giaour” itself (Vathek p.128); the order of Moslem prayers (Siege 22: Vathek p.129); Istakhar (Bride 358 and n: Vathek p.130 and 155); derviches (Giaour 340, Corsair 670: Vathek p.144); peris (Bride 567: Vathek p.146); butterflies of Kashmeer (Giaour 385: Vathek p.146); Mejnoun and Leila (Bride 72 and n: Vathek p.147); gouls (Giaour 784: Vathek p.149); the carbuncle of Giamschid (Giaour 479: Vathek p.149); clapping of hands (Bride 232 and n: Vathek p.150); bread and salt (Giaour 343 and n: Vathek p.150); Azrael (Bride 233 and n: Vathek p.151); Monkir (Giaour 748: Vathek p.151); Al-Sirat, the bridge to paradise (Giaour 483: Vathek p.151); afrits (Giaour 784: Vathek p.138); and Eblis (Giaour 750 and n: Vathek p.154). An excellent example of the style of his borrowing may be seen at his note to “Monkir” at The Giaour, 748. Here’s Henley’s note to Vathek, first edition (1786), p.141: Monker and Nakir] These are two black angels of a tremendous appearance, who examine the departed on the subject of his faith: by whom, if he give not a satisfactory account, he is sure to be cudgelled with maces of red-hot iron, and tormented more variously than words can describe.11

Here’s what Byron makes of it: Monkir and Nekir are the inquisitors of the dead, before whom the corpse undergoes a slight noviciate and preparatory training for damnation. If the answers are none of the clearest, he is hauled up with a scythe and thumped down with a red hot mace till properly seasoned, with a variety of subsidiary probations. The office of these angels is no sinecure; there are but two; and the number of orthodox deceased being in a small proportion to the remainder, their hands are always full.12

Byron mixes up the names of the angels (as if defying pedants to care), but otherwise follows Beckford / Henley closely, adding a scythe, and a 10: Page references in this paragraph are to Roger Lonsdale’s edition of Vathek (Oxford World’s Classics, 1983). 11: William Beckford, Vathek, (1786), p.313; ed. Lonsdale, p.151, 79n2. 12: The Giaour, B.’s note to p.748.

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heavier sceptic’s irony. His joke in the last sentence anticipates the one at stanza 3 of The Vision of Judgement. Thus, when at Don Juan I 128 5-8 Byron writes, This is the age of Oddities let loose; Where different talents find their different Marts, You’d best begin with truth, and when you’ve lost your Labour, there’s a sure market for Imposture. –

… it isn’t just new noses and guillotines – his ostensible subjects – that he’s talking about. “Imposture” is another way of decrying the success he had during his years of Fame. However, his indebtedness extends into the more truthful Don Juan: lamb and pistachios (III, 62, 2);13 the sacred camel (VI, 102, 8);14 Kaf (VI, 86, 8);15 and the use of dwarves, eunuchs and mutes (V, stanzas 87-9) are all to be found in Vathek. At least Byron doesn’t pretend that the “costume” and “correctness” for which he will “combat lustily” are from his own observation and experience in Albania, Greece, and Turkey. And indeed we look in vain for any of the ideas or words in his letters from 1809 to 1811. His orientalism is a literary thing only. In fact, his use of exotic terms is virtually restricted to The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos. Lord Holland, leader of the Whigs in the Lords, didn’t like them: the sound of some of your Turkish words is not calculated to remove my aversion to them – Wulwulhey16 is the devil of a word & even in reading your obliging note on my kinder opinions about the nightingale’s song17 I could not help regretting that Philomena had so inharmonious a name in the East as Bulbul18 – You will think me very 13: Vathek (1786), p.230. 14: Vathek (1786), pp.314-15. 15: Vathek (1786), pp.253-4. 16: BoA 1108-9: Can he not hear / The loud Wul-wulleh warn his distant ear? B.’s note says, The death-song of the Turkish women. 17: BoA, B.’s note to 288: It has been much doubted whether the notes of this “Lover of the rose” are sad or merry; and Mr Fox’s remarks on the subject have provoked some learned controversy as to the opinions of the ancients on the subject. I dare not venture a conjecture on the point, though a little inclined to the “errare mallem,” &c., if Mr Fox was mistaken. 18: None of the remaining four Turkish Tales have the same amount of “Turkish” phrases as G and BoA.

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independent to criticize at this note I should not do so unless I could say as I can with perfect sincerity that I am delighted with the poem, The descriptions the thoughts the story the language {the characters} & the versification wherever your Moslem predilections allow you to adhere to a Christian metre – do you mean Selim’s turning round when he is wounded to be a last look at Zuleika19 – ? – The Costume (as the affected critics call it) of the East seems to me perfectly preserved but after all I know little of it but what you have told me –20

In the second note to Murray, Byron seems to echo Holland’s ironical use of “costume”. Admonished with such politeness, he avoided strange (Vathek-derived) vocabulary in his later Turkish Tales. Two words which he may have learned on his travels are “comboloioo” (worry-beads: Bride of Abydos l 54) and “djereed” or “jereed” (javelin: The Giaour l.251). The former occurs in a letter to Lady Melbourne of April 5th 1813 (BLJ III 35-6); the latter in Hobhouse’s diary for Sunday March 11th 1810 and Sunday May 27th 1810.

Plagiarism in The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos: Charlotte Dacre and John Brown An important ur-text for The Giaour is Charlotte Dacre’s 1800 poem Moorish Combat, from which Byron borrows his triangulated loveconflict: Say, did they rest between each fervent kiss? Ah! no; but while their flutt’ring sighs unite, No moisture e’er their glowing lips might cool, Swiftly dried up by passion’s fierce delight. How vain to stem their rapture as it flow’d, Or whisper to their stagg’ring sense, beware! His eyes inebriate wander’d o’er her charms, While hers to earth were cast with chastened air. Lo! from a mountain’s steep and shadowy side,

19: BoA II, 563-4. 20: Lord Holland to B., November 16th 1813 (text from B.L.Add.Mss. 51639 ff.146-51).

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A longer comparison would make interesting distinctions, not just between the conventional style of Dacre and the more disturbing one of Byron, but between Dacre’s aggressive feminism and Byron’s determination to keep his heroine suppressed and silent. A clear source for The Bride of Abydos is the then well-known tragedy Barbarossa, by John Brown, a Cambridge D.D. who was friends with Gray and Warburton. Garrick had acted in the 1754 premiere, and Byron could well have seen a revival in 180521 with William Betty, the Young Roscius, of whom we know him to have been an admirer. Barbarossa is set in Algiers – but an Algiers devoid of mosques, mullahs, muftis, or even palm-trees. The evil protagonist (his opening line is “Valiant Othman, / Are these vile slaves impal’d?”: 1st edn, 1755, p.13), has killed his predecessor and sent assassins out to murder his predecessor’s son, whose name is Selim! John Brown writes an effectively-constructed piece of theatre of the rant-and-anguish sort, with Macbeth, Richard III and Hamlet as his sturdy subtexts: it’s a better stage-holder than Marino Faliero, a criticism by which Byron would not be bothered one iota. The essence of it is that Selim arrives back in court, disguised as his own assassin, with the aims of saving the virtue of his mother, Zaphira, killing Barbarossa, and marrying his love, who has the Byzantine name of Irene, but who is Barbarossa’s daughter, torn between love and duty in the classic manner. Though she doesn’t betray Selim, she makes Barbarossa suspicious of him. Brown creates from Selim’s imprisonment, Irene’s anguished guilt, and Barbarossa’s cruelty, all the dramatic incidents which Byron, in his rushed conclusion to The Bride, eschews. Our suspicion that Byron’s Selim is a bit of a wimp is reinforced when in this, the ur-text, it is an associate who slays the tyrant, not the hero. It’s clear Byron remembered Barbarossa (the name of Selim’s father, Abdallah,22 comes from it: 1755 edn, p.55), and that his rushed narrative in The Bride is a 21: See Megan Boyes, My Amiable Mamma (1991), p.107. 22: Bride, ll.700, 721, 732, 735, 760, 1058, and 1137.

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consequence of his negative reaction to its excesses – mild though they are within the dramatic conventions of the eighteenth century. His negative reaction was, however, not compensated for by any inventivess of his own. Only his decision to increase the Shakespearean weight of the characters by making Giaffir Selim’s uncle, and his use of numerous Islamic details, change the emphasis – Brown’s Irene would not be the same if she read the Qur’an and played with her lute and comboloioo, as Byron’s Zuleika does. All Brown allows his characters by way of religion are invocations to the multi-faith ideas of “Angels” and “Heav’n”. For The Corsair’s reliance for one of its episodes on Wieland’s Oberon, see the Corsair chapter above.

Wordsworth and Childe Harold III In a letter to Henry Taylor, of December 26th 1823, Wordsworth writes: I have not, nor ever had a single poem of Lord Byron’s by me, except the Lara, given me by Mr Rogers, & therefore could not quote any thing illustrative of his poetic obligations to me: as far as I am acquainted with his works, they are {the} most apparent in the 3d Canto of Childe Harold; not so much in particular expressions, tho’ there is no want of these, as in the tone (assumed rather than natural) of enthusiastic admiration of Nature, & a sensibility to her influences. Of my writings you need not read more than the blank verse poem on the river Wye23 to be convinced of this.24 “You are accused of owing a great deal to Wordsworth” Medwin reports himself as saying; “Certainly there are some stanzas in the Third Canto of ‘Childe Harold’ that smell strongly of the Lakes: for instance — I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; – and to me High mountains are a feeling!”

23: Tintern Abbey. 24: Bodleian MS Eng. Letters c. 1 ff. 337-8. Another version is at The Letters of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, ed. Moorman and Hill, Clarendon Press, Oxford 1970, III 237-8.

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“Very possibly,” replied he. “Shelley, when I was in Switzerland, used to dose me with Wordsworth even to nausea; and I do remember then reading some things of his with pleasure. He had once a feeling for Nature, which he carried almost to a deification of it: – that’s why Shelley liked his poetry.”25

The conversation occurred some time between November 1821 and March 1822. Byron normally despised Wordsworth as a time-serving feudalistic sycophant and a poet of tedium and triviality. The confession is evidence either of Shelley’s persuasive personality, of Byron’s “openness to impressions” – or of both. For a few weeks in 1816, he felt Nature to be a pantheistic healer. But the influence on him of Shelley’s Wordsworth did not last. On September 28th 1816, Shelley having gone and Hobhouse having returned, Byron wrote the following in his Alpine Journal: I was disposed to be pleased – I am a lover of Nature – and an Admirer of Beauty – I can bear fatigue – & welcome privation – and have seen some of the noblest views in the world. – But in all this – the recollections of bitterness – & more especially of recent & more home desolation – which must accompany me through life – have preyed upon me here – and neither the music of the Shepherd – the crashing of the Avalanche – nor the torrent – the mountain – the Glacier – the Forest – nor the Cloud – have for one moment – lightened the weight upon my heart – nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty & the power and the Glory – around – above – & beneath me. – I am past reproaches – and there is a time for all things – I am past the wish of vengeance – and I know of none like for what I have suffered – but the hour will come – when what I feel must be felt – & the – – but enough.26

His reading of Wordsworth (fair enough, by implication, even as he queries it, in the above passage) is, in Childe Harold III, perverse. Wordsworth would have Nature as an Other, a thing mightier than man, a teacher of humility, of patience and submission. Here are the famous lines from Tintern Abbey:

25: Medwin p. 194. 26: BLJ V 104-5.

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And I have felt A presence that disturbs me with the joy Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime Of something far more deeply interfused, Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, And the round ocean, and the living air, And the blue sky, and in the mind of man; A motion and a spirit, that impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought, And rolls through all things.27

But here is Byron: Sky – Mountains – River – Winds – Lake – Lightnings! Ye With night, and clouds, and thunder, and a Soul To make these felt and feeling, well may be Things that have made me watchful; the far roll Of your departing voices is the knoll Of what in me is sleepless – if I rest; But where of ye, oh tempests – is the goal? Are ye like those within the human breast? Or do ye find, at length, like Eagles, some high Nest?28

For Byron, Nature is another self – or rather, a reflection of his own ego, another way of rendering himself, not patient and philosophical, but more volcanic, alienated, and dramatic in the eyes of the world. How much of this misinterpretation is indeed a consequence of Shelley’s “dosing,” we shall never know.

Remorse and Childe Harold IV In Childe Harold IV occurs a striking echo of Coleridge – from Remorse. At one of the play’s fifth-act climaxes, the wicked brother Ordonio, having been discovered, pleads with the virtuous and wronged brother: Ordonio: My Brother! I will kneel to you, my Brother! (kneeling.) Forgive me, Alvar! —— Curse me with forgiveness!29

27: Wordsworth, Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey, Lyrical Ballads (1798) p. 207. 28: CHP III, stanza 96. 29: Remorse, V i; p.70.

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The paradoxical idea of being cursed by forgiveness presumably means that the party forgiven is too far gone in guilt for the forgiveness to be efficacious – that the forgiveness is a useless gesture, an act of Christian idealism which underestimates the power of sin and overestimates the ease of atonement. Coleridge gives the job of expressing it to the sinner. Byron, reversing things in his usual way, gives it to the character whom he would wish us to see as the injured party, the sinned against – namely, himself: … But in this page a record will I seek. Not in the air shall these my words disperse, Though I be ashes; a far hour shall wreak The deep prophetic fulness of this Verse, And pile on human heads the Mountain of my Curse! That Curse shall be Forgiveness. Have I not – Hear me, my mother Earth! behold it, Heaven! Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? Have I not had my brain seared, my heart riven, Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life’s life lied away? And only not to desperation driven, Because not altogether of such Clay As rots into the Souls of those whom I survey. 30

The third stanza here, with its serpentine imagery, was omitted, not at Byron’s wish, but at that of his London friends, embarrassed, we must assume, by the egotism displayed so fulsomely. Lady Byron is stigmatised as being among the “creeping things”, and “The Bat” was one of Caroline Lamb’s nicknames.

30: Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage IV, stanzas 134-135a. Text of 135a from Erdman / Worrall, Manuscripts of the Younger Romantics Byron VI (Garland 1991), p.429.

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For the sinner – Coleridge’s villain, Ordonio – to ask to be cursed with forgiveness, is fair enough. He’s signalling that no matter how sincere his brother’s forgiveness may be, he is himself bound for hell. On the other hand, for the person who claims to be the victim of the sin to wish their forgiveness to operate as a curse – for them to wish the state of their enemies’ consciences to be exacerbated by the knowledge that they’re forgiven – is surely a bit much. Especially so when we’re not at all sure that Byron was the innocent and injured party. He had been the serpent, the gnat and the bat. It was Annabella who’d “had … brain seared, … heart riven, / Hopes sapped, name blighted, Life’s life lied away”. I don’t believe Coleridge ever noticed how his play had been traduced in this manner.

Caleb Williams and Manfred’s dying line In Godwin’s Caleb Williams we read the following: “Three or four times he was bedewed with profuse sweats; and these again were succeeded by an extreme dryness and burning heat of the skin. He was next covered with small livid spots: symptoms of shivering followed, but these he drove away with a determined resolution. He then became tranquil and composed, and, after some time, decided to go to bed, it being already night. ‘Falkland,’ said he, pressing his hand, ‘the task of dying is not so difficult as some imagine. When one looks back from the brink of it, one wonders that so total a subversion can take place at so easy a price.’31

We know that Byron had read Caleb Williams, not from any of his library catalogues, where it doesn’t appear, but from a letter from Lady Byron to Dr Baillie of January 8th 1816.32 When Byron received the first edition of Manfred he was furious, because Manfred’s final line (“Old Man! ’tis not so difficult to die”) had been cut. This despite the fact that, like “That curse shall be forgiveness”, it was someone else’s.

The Mysteries of Udolpho and Childe Harold IV In Childe Harold IV, Byron almost “comes out”, and pays a great compliment to Ann Radcliffe. Here’s a passage everyone knows:

31: Godwin, Caleb Williams, Bk. I Chap. V. 32: See Malcolm Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife (Macdonald 1982), p.340.

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I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs; A Palace and a Prison on each hand: I saw from out the wave her structures rise As from the stroke of the Enchanter’s wand: A thousand Years their cloudy wings expand Around me, and a dying Glory smiles O’er the far times, when many a subject Land Looked to the winged Lion’s marble piles, Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!33

It’s often been pointed out that the opening of Childe Harold IV owes something to Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho: Nothing could exceed Emily’s admiration on her first view of Venice, with its islets, palaces, and towers rising out of the sea, whose clear surface reflected the tremulous picture in all its colours. The sun, sinking in the west, tinted the waves and the lofty mountains of Friuli, which skirt the northern shores of the Adriatic, with a saffron glow, while on the marble porticos and colonnades of St. Mark were thrown the rich lights and shades of evening. As they glided on, the grander features of this city appeared more distinctly: its terraces, crowned with airy yet majestic fabrics, touched, as they now were, with the splendour of the setting sun, appeared as if they had been called up from the ocean by the wand of an enchanter, rather than reared by mortal hands. (II, 2)

Slightly later in Childe Harold IV, he’s franker still, both in verse and prose annotation: I loved her from my boyhood; She to me Was as a fairy city of the heart, Rising like Water-columns from the sea, Of joy the sojourn, and of wealth the Mart; And Otway, Radcliffe, Schiller, Shakespeare’s Art,* Had stamped her image in me, and even so, Although I found her thus, we did not part; Perchance even dearer in her day of Woe, Than when She was a boast, a marvel, and a show. * Venice Preserved. – Mysteries of Udolpho. – the GeisterSeer, or Armenian. – The Merchant of Venice. Othello.

33: CHP IV st.1.

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Radcliffe’s version of Venice was, he seems to imply, a suitable one for his boyhood. My suggestion is that Byron knew what he was doing when he employed this method of both covert and overt acknowledgement, in one of his most famous poems. The passage in Stanza 1 is not a lift, but a homage – more honest than what he did with the words of Beckford, Godwin, or Coleridge. Or it could be camouflage for the fact that, when standing in the Bridge of Sighs (you can’t stand on it, it’s a covered walkway), very little of Venice is actually visible. —————

Don Juan Gil Blas Some time early in 1818, when he may be imagined as thinking about Don Juan, Byron bought a new edition of Alain René le Sage’s novel Gil Blas. In it he found a “Licentiate Cédillo” (see Don Juan II 25 2). A “Pedrillo” turns up later. He found the name “Nunez” (see Don Juan I 150 2), and the name “Moncada” (see Don Juan II 24 3). Later still, a “Donna Julia” and an “Antonia” occur, though they are not mistress and maid. There is a “Donna Inez”. The names “Don Alfonso” and “Don José” are common. At the end of the book, Gil Blas goes home to the village from whence he set out, and falls in love with the sister of one his neighbours, who is called … Don Juan. Don Juan, who seems a nice enough fellow, marries Gil Blas’ god-daughter, and they all live happily ever after.

Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea In Canto II of his greatest poem, Byron took every nautical detail for the shipwreck from a three-volume chronicle called Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea (1812) by the Scots antiquarian and naturalist Sir John Dalyell. He kept carefully to the third volume – the one describing events in modern times – since his shipwreck must have occurred in the early 1790s, and he didn’t want any inadvertent seafaring anachronisms creeping in. He also used details from his “Granddad’s Narrative” (The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron, 1768), and A Narrative of the Mutiny on board His Majesty’s Ship Bounty by William Bligh (1790). A book by Savigny and Corréard, Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal (London 1818) about the notorious wreck of the frigate Méduse (painted by Géricault), inspired a particularly sick section (sts.94-5).

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For Byron’s intention was to give Don Juan, not a background and detail from fanciful books such as Vathek, but from sober repositories of verifiable, journalistic fact: “there should always”, he’d written in 1817, “be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric – and pure invention is but the talent of a liar. – – –”34 Here is a passage from Dalyell (Shipwreck of the Juno) which Byron versifies. He would have known it since childhood, for it was a favourite (if that’s the word) with the boys at Dulwich: Some struggled hard, and died in great agony; but it was not always those whose strength was most impaired that died the easiest, though in some cases it might be so. I particularly remember the following instances: Mr. Wade’s boy, a stout healthy lad, died early, and almost without a groan; while another, of the same age, but of a less promising appearance, held out much longer. The fate of these unfortunate boys differed also in another respect highly deserving of notice. Their fathers were both in the foretop when the boys were taken ill. The father of Mr Wade’s hearing of his son’s illness, answered, with indifference, “that he could nothing for him,” and left him to his fate. The other [father], when the accounts reached him, hurried down, and watching a favourable moment, crawled on all fours along the weather gunwale to his son, who was in the mizzen rigging. By that time only three or four planks of the quarter-deck remained just over the quarter gallery, and to this spot the unhappy man led his son, making him fast to the rail, to prevent his being washed away. Whenever the boy was seized with a fit of retching, the father lifted him up, and wiped away the foam from his lips; and if a shower came, he made him open his mouth to receive the drops, or gently squeezed them into it from a rag. In this affecting situation both remained four or five days, till the boy expired. The unfortunate parent, as if unwilling to believe the fact, raised the body, looked wistfully at it, and when he could no longer entertain any doubt, watched it in silence until it was carried off by the sea; then wrapping himself in a piece of canvas, sunk down, and rose no more; though he must have lived two days longer, as we judged from the quivering of his limbs when a wave broke over him ...35

Here’s how Byron versifies it: There were two fathers in this ghastly Crew, And with them their two Sons, of whom the One Was more robust and hardy to the View, 34: B. to Murray, April 2nd 1817 (text from NLS Ms.43489; BLJ V 203-5). 35: Dalyell III pp.273-4 (Shipwreck of the Juno: Monthly Magazine, September 1821 pp.107 -8.)

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But he died early, and when he was gone His nearest Messmate told his Sire, who threw One glance on him, and said, “Heaven’s will be done! “I can do nothing” and he saw him thrown Into the Deep without a tear or groan. The other Father had a weaklier Child, Of a soft Cheek, and aspect delicate; But the Boy bore up long, and with a mild And patient Spirit held aloof his fate; Little he said, and now and then he smiled, As if to win a part from off the Weight He saw increasing on his father’s heart, With the deep deadly thought, that they must part. And o’er him bent his Sire, and never raised His eyes from off his face – but wiped the foam From his pale lips, and ever on him gazed, And when the wished-for Shower at length was come, And the boy’s Eyes, which the dull film half glazed, Brightened and for a moment seemed to roam, He squeezed from out a Rag some drops of Rain Into his dying Child’s Mouth – but in vain. – The Boy expired, the father held the Clay, And looked upon it long, and when at last Death left no doubt, and the dead burthen lay Stiff on his heart, and pulse and hope was past, He watched it wistfully, until away ‘Twas borne by the rude wave wherein ‘twas cast, Then he himself sunk down all dumb and Shivering, And gave no sign of life, save his limbs quivering. – (Don Juan II sts. 87-90)

Byron, while not departing for Dalyell’s bare facts, adds numerous details, increasing both the drama, and (characteristically, in an episode which elsewhere shows major signs of scepticism if not blasphemy), the religious implications of the event. “… ghastly Crew” connects Don Juan with The Ancient Mariner.36 “Heaven’s will be done!” makes the father more Christian-stoical, and less indifferent than his original. Dalyell’s “… of a less promising appearance” is made more lovable with “Of a soft Cheek, and aspect delicate”; while “with a mild / And patient Spirit held aloof his fate” brings, again, a greater Christian spirit than Dalyell reports. 36: See also “a little speck” at l.450 of The Vision of Judgement.

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In Dalyell, the boy’s eyes do not “Brighten … and for a moment seem … to roam”. Byron creates more drama from death than the prose possesses. “… wistfully” is the only emotive word which Byron takes over from Dalyell. At the final couplet he appears to steal a polysyllable (“quivering”) from Dalyell, but is also echoing the death of Alp at The Siege of Corinth (1813) 834-9: A flash like fire within his eyes Blazed, as he bent no more to rise, And then eternal darkness sunk Through all the palpitating trunk; Nought of life left, save a quivering Where his limbs were slightly shivering.

All this in effortless ottava rima. Brilliant as his feat was, Byron didn’t acknowledge his creative borrowing for the shipwreck, and was at last uncovered in public print. On August 1st 1821 (two years after the poems’ publication), The Monthly Magazine printed the following, on pages 19-21: Plagiarisms of Lord Byron detected. To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. SIR, LORD BYRON has been so long, and so deservedly esteemed as the greatest poet of the present age, that it is with a feeling of the utmost deference, I presume to offer for insertion in your valuable and widely circulated Magazine, the following extracts from the Second Canto of his Don Juan, with corresponding passages from a work entitled “Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea,” in 3 vols. To attempt a criticism upon the writings of his Lordship, were it even possible, would require a much abler pen, and a far maturer judgement than I possess; and not without timidity do I venture to ask if, in the following stanzas which I have selected, plagiarism the most glaring, is not sufficiently evident? Accident furnished me with the narratives from which Lord Byron appears to have derived most of the incidents in that part of his Don Juan, in which is so admirably described a storm and shipwreck. Most readers of taste have doubtless heard or perused that portion of the poem, and whilst their feelings have been harrowed by his appalling and heart-rending recital, few, perhaps, were aware that his Lordship was indebted for the most prominent features therein exhibited, to the work above-

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mentioned. The interest excited by the well-imagined sufferings of the hapless crew of the vessel in which Juan embarked, will not, I am sure, be at all diminished, but, on the contrary, increased, by learning that the horrors of such a scene were actually experienced by some of our fellowcreatures. Possessed, as is his Lordship, of an imagination, fertile beyond most, it is impossible for a moment to suppose that he could have occasion to borrow from the writings of any one; and doubtless his motive in thus illustrating his narrative with incidents which are well authenticated to have occurred, was to render his descriptions the more natural. But from what cause is it, that there are no notes subjoined, acknowledging the sources from which he derived them? I trust the freedom with which the charge of plagiarism is here advanced against so renowned a poet, will be justified by the importance of keeping even renown within the pale of honesty. Norwich, Feb, 20th, 1821. C.E.S.

With what seems impossible speed – two days after the above appeared – Byron responded to it (perhaps Murray had an advance copy of the New Monthly Magazine): With regard to the charges about the Shipwreck, – I think that I told both you and Mr Hobhouse, years ago, that [there] was not a single circumstance of it not taken from fact; not, indeed, from any single shipwreck, but all from actual facts of different wrecks. Almost all Don Juan is real life, either my own, or from people I knew.37

Notice that he doesn’t actually reject the charge of plagiarism, though “is real life, either my own, or from people I knew” would imply such rejection.

37: B. to Murray, August 23rd 1821 (text not yet found at NLS Ms.43492; BLJ VIII 186-7).

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Tully’s Tripoli Don Juan cantos III, IV and V had been published on August 8th. The accusation of plagiarism in Canto II made Byron self-conscious at last, and he continued, as if casually: By the way, much of the description of the furniture, in Canto 3d, is taken from Tully’s Tripoli38 (pray note this), and the rest from my own observation. Remember, I never meant to conceal this at all, and have only not stated it, because Don Juan had no preface nor name to it. If you think it worth while to make this statement, do so, in your own way. I laugh at such charges, convinced that no writer ever borrowed less, or made his materials more his own.39

“Tully’s Tripoli” (A Narrative of Ten Years’ Residence at Tripoli in Africa to give it its full title) was not written by Richard Tully, the British Consul in Tripoli, but by his sister-in-law (the first edition says “sister”)40 whose name is not given. Published in 1816, it describes the habits, customs, dress, personalities and politics which the Consul and his family encountered during their residence, which lasted from 1783 to 1793. Woman or no, Byron would have warmed to her book because of the sympathetic way in which, while never losing her own Christian values, the authoress treats Islamic manners: she is no canting evangelical. Her letters – reviewed in the Quarterly for April 1816 – were reprinted several times. In fact, virtually all of the furniture in Canto III, much of the food and drink, and the greater part of the costume, are borrowed from “Tully’s Tripoli”. It’s true that “no writer … made his materials more his own”, but not that “no writer ever borrowed less”. Ten years in North Africa had given Miss Tully a far greater exposure to Islamic customs than Byron had had in his eastern stay: especially in the matter of female attire – he met no Moslem women. Like his acknowledged favourite, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Tully’s sex also gave her entrées to places where no European male could go except at some cost to his person. Here are two sections from Tully which Byron borrows:

38: Hobhouse reports reading “Tully’s Tripoli” as early as September 13th 1816, at Diodati. 39: B. to Murray, August 23rd 1821 (text from NLS Ms.43492; BLJ VIII 186-7). 40: I’m surprised there’s been no research done on this woman.

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs The carpet was of crimson satin with a deep border of pale blue quilted; this is laid over Indian mats and other carpets. In the best part of the room the sofa is placed, which occupies three sides of an alcove, the floor of which is raised. The sofa and the cushions that lay around were of crimson velvet: the centre cushions being embroidered with a sun in gold of highly embossed work, the rest were of gold and silver tissue. The curtains for the alcove were made to match those before the bed. A number of lookingglasses and a profusion of fine china and chrystal completed the ornaments and furniture of the room, in which there were neither tables nor chairs. A small table, about six inches high, is brought in when refreshments are served; it is of ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl, tortoiseshell, ivory, gold and silver, of choice woods, or of plain mahogany, according to the circumstances of the proprietor.41 The sides of the door-way, and the entrance into the room, were marble; and according to the custom of furnishing here, choice china and chrystal encircled the room on a moulding near the ceiling. Close beneath these ornaments were placed large looking-glasses with frames of gold and silver; the floor was covered with curious matting and rich carpetting over it; loose mattrasses [sic] and cushions placed on the ground, made up in the form of sophas, covered with velvet, and embroidered with gold and silver, served for seats, with Turkey carpets laid before them.42

Here’s Byron’s adaptation: Haidee and Juan carpeted their feet On Crimson Satin, bordered with pale blue; Their Sofa occupied three parts complete Of the Apartment, and appeared quite new; The velvet Cushions (for a throne more meet) Were Scarlet, from whose glowing Centre grew A Sun embossed in Gold, whose rays of Tissue, Meridian-like, were seen all light to issue. – Chrystal and Marble, Plate, and Porcelain, Had done their work of Splendour; Indian Mats And Persian Carpets, which the heart bled to stain, Over the floors were spread; Gazelles and Cats, And dwarfs and blacks, and such like things, that gain Their bread as Ministers and favourites (that’s To say by degradation) mingled there As plentiful as in a Court or Fair. –

41: A Narrative of Ten Years’ Residence at Tripoli in Africa (1816), p.135. 42: Ibid., p.32.

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His intention – as with his versification of Dalyell – is to add extra dimensions of grandeur and morality to the prose source. He adds “for a throne more meet” to the velvet cushions, and “Meridian-like, were seen all light to issue” to the embroidered centre cushions. The gazelles and cats, dwarves and blacks (with the reflection about the degradation of ministers and favourites) are all his invention. Tully’s hosts are not holding Open House: Byron’s final couplet shows that Juan and Haidee are. It adds to the sense both of their hospitality, and of their profligacy – living as if there’s no tomorrow, which, in a sense, for them, there isn’t. All the time, the ottava rima flows so effortlessly that you hardly notice it.

Essai sur l’Histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie For his next prose source Byron went one stage further, and versified a French book. At the very start of the Preface to Cantos VI, VII and VIII, he writes: The details of the Siege of Ismail in two of the following Cantos (i.e. the 7th & 8th) are taken from a French work entitled “Histoire de la Nouvelle Russie.” – Some of the incidents attributed to Don Juan really occurred – particularly the circumstance of his saving the infant – which was the actual case of the late Duc de Richelieu then a young volunteer in the Russian service – and afterwards the founder and benefactor of Odessa – where his name and memory can never cease to be regarded with reverence.

The Marquis Gabriel de Castelnau’s Essai sur l’Histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie was published in 1820. It is an apologia for Russia’s annexation of the Ukraine under Potemkin during the 1780s (a process Mr Putin, now in 2014, is trying to replicate), which Byron, needless to say, inverts, putting Castelnau’s chauvinistic narrative at the service of an anti-war polemic. Armand Emanuel du Plessis, Duc de

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Richelieu, fought for the Russians at Ismail. His feat in saving the infant (see Canto VIII sts.91-6), is reported by Castelnau, via a quotation from his diary, in a note to pp.216-17 of the Essai’s second volume. Richelieu was, from 1803 to 1814, governor of Odessa on the Black Sea. During his time there the city prospered; his statue is still to be seen at the top of the granite steps immortalised by Eisenstein. ————— Byron had not told anyone how heavily he had relied on Dalyell for Canto II – did he hope to get away with it? He had told Murray, and Murray alone, how much he’d relied on Tully for Canto III, and that only when his borrowings from Dalyell had been detected: now, at last, when he borrows from Castelnau, he advertises the fact on the first page of the book. ————— Whereas Byron treats Dalyell and Tully seriously (for he’s in sympathy with whatever ideology they have), with the French of Castelnau (with whose ideology he’s in contention) he plays Byronic games. Sometimes he seems straightforward: Le rampart en terre est prodigieusement élevé à cause de l’immense profondité du fossé; il est cependant absolumment rasant; il n’y a ni ouvrage avancé, ni chemin couvert. Un bastion de pierres, ouvert par une gorge très-étroite et dont les murailles sont fort épaisses, a une batterie casementée et une à barbette; il défend la rive du Danube. Du côté droit de la ville est un cavalier de quarante pieds d’élévation à pic, garni de vingt-deux pièces de canon, et qui défend la partie gauche.43 This Circumstance may serve to give a notion Of the high talents of this new Vauban; But the town Ditch below was deep as Ocean, The Rampart higher than you’d wish to hang; But then there was a great want of precaution, (Prithee, excuse this engineering Slang) Nor work advanced, nor covered way was there To hint at least “Here is no Thoroughfare.” But a Stone Bastion with a narrow gorge, And Walls as thick as Most Skulls born as yet, 43: Castelnau II p.202, quoting the 1790 manuscript diary of the Duc de Richelieu.

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Despite translating and versifying his source skilfully, he may not himself have understood exactly what these artillery terms meant (though “cap-à-pé” is familiar from Hamlet). A “barbette” is an earthen rampart, and a “cavalier” is a large gun emplacement. Like the Russian terms versts and toises (see lines 71-2) they give the poem an authoritative air which is meant in part to blind us with military jargon. Compare the words of Uncle Toby at Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, II 12: ... when a ravelin, brother, stands before the curtin, it is a ravelin; and when a ravelin stands before a bastion, then the ravelin is not a ravelin; — it is a half-moon; — a half-moon likewise is a half-moon, and no more, so long as it stands before its bastion; — but was it to change place, and get before the curtin, — ‘twould be longer a half-moon; a half-moon, in that case, is not a half-moon; — ‘tis no more than a ravelin. — I think, quoth my father, that the noble science of defence has its weak sides, — as well as others.

Byron said of Don Juan – in a rare unguarded moment – “You must not mind occasional rambling I mean it for a poetical T. Shandy – or Montaigne’s Essays – with a story for a hinge”.44 If therefore we’re beginning to suspect Byron of Shandean mischief, the following will confirm our suspicion; first, here’s Castelnau: La première attaque était composée de trois colonnades, commandées par les lieutenants-généraux Paul Potiemkin, Serge Lwow, les généraux-majors Maurice Lacsy, Théodore Meknop. Ces trois colonnes étaient fortes de cinq mille sept cent hommes. Trois autres colonnes, destinées à la seconde attaque, avaient pour chefs le comte Samoïlow, les généraux Élie de Bezborodko, Michel Koutousow; les brigardiers Orlow, 44: B. to Douglas Kinnaird, April 14th 1823 (text from NLS Ms.43454; BLJ X 150).

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs Platow, Ribaupierre. Dix milles trois cents combattans composaient celles-ci. La troisième attaque par eau n’avait que deux colonnes, sous les ordres des généraux-majors Ribas et Arseniew, des brigardiers Markoff et Tchépéga. Ces deux colonnes réunissaient six milles sept cent hommes.45

Here’s what Byron does with it: The Russians now were ready to attack – But oh, ye Goddesses of War and Glory! How shall I spell the name of each Cossacque, Who were immortal, Could one tell their Story – Alas! What to their Memory can lack? Achilles’ Self was not more grim and gory Than thousands of this new and polished Nation, Whose names want nothing but – Pronunciation. Still I’ll record a few, if but to increase Our Euphony: there was Strongenoff, and Strokonoff, Meknop, Serge Lwow, Arseniew of modern Greece, And Tschitsshakoff, and Roguenoff, and Chokenoff, And others of twelve Consonants apiece; And more might be found out, if I could poke enough Into Gazettes, but Fame (capricious Strumpet!) It seems, has got an ear, as well as trumpet, And cannot tune those discords of Narration, Which may be names at Moscow, into rhyme; Yet there were several worth Commemoration As e’er was Virgin of a Nuptial Chime; Soft words too fitted for the Peroration Of Londonderry, drawling against Time, Ending in “-ischskin,” “-ousckin,” “-iffsky,” “-ouski,” Of whom we can insert but Rousamouski. Scherematoff, and Chrematoff, Koklofty, Koclobski, Kourakin, and Mouskin Pouskin All proper Men of weapons, as e’er scoffed high Against a foe, or ran a sabre through skin; Little cared they for Mahomet or Mufti, Unless to make their kettledrums a new skin Out of their hides, if parchment had grown dear, And no more handy substitute been near. 45: Castelnau II p.207.

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Byron and Plagiarism Then there were foreigners of much renown, Of various Nations, and all Volunteers, Not fighting for their Country or its Crown, But wishing to be one day Brigadiers, Also to have the sacking of a town, A pleasant thing to young men, in their years; ‘Mongst these were several Englishmen of pith – Sixteen called Thomson, and nineteen named Smith. (Don Juan VII sts.14-18)

Byron’s anti-Russian humour has now become obvious. He adds much more facetious commentary than in the cases of Dalyell or Tully, and in addition confuses his source with falsities. “Scherematoff, and Chrematoff, Koklofty, / Koclobski, Kourakin, and Mouskin Pouskin” are a mixture of the fictitious and the real. “Koklofty”46 and “Koclobski” are imported, like “Arseniew” (who is in Castelnau, but pronounced, please, “Ar-sen-yev”) principally to cause offence; Scherematoff (also not in Castelnau) is to be found at William Tooke’s History of Russia, II 464, Chrematoff (as Cherematoff) at Castelnau, I 314, Kourakin (as Kurakin) at Tooke’s Life of Catherine II I 133, and Mouskin Pouskin (as MoushkinPoushkin) at Tooke’s Life, III 254. Byron’s pretence of journalistic authenticity is wearing thin, for none of them are in Castelnau, and none were at Ismail. Lastly, Castelnau lists no Englishmen at all. We now jump to Canto VIII. Here’s Castelnau: A peine eut-on parcouru l’espace de quelques toises au-delà des batteries, que les Turcs, qui n’avaient point tiré pendant toute la nuit, s’apercevant de nos mouvemens, commencèrent de leur côté un feu très-vif, qui embrasa le reste de l’horizon; mais ce fut bien autre chose lorsque, avancés davantage, le feu de la mousqueterie commença dans toute l’étendue du rempart que nous apercevions. Ce fut alors que la place parut à nos yeux comme un volcan dont le feu sortait de toutes parts. Un cri universel d’allah, qui se répétait tout autour de la ville, vint encore rendre plus extraordinaire cet instant, dont il est impossible de se faire une idée.47

Byron embroiders upon this in a way that he never embroidered upon Dalyell or Tully: The Column ordered on the assault, scarce passed Beyond the Russian batteries a few toises, 46: John Hely-Hutchinson, 1757-1832, was the 1st Baron Hutchinson of Alexandria and Knocklofty. 47: Castelnau II p.209, quoting the memoirs of the Duc de Richelieu.

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When up the bristling Moslem rose at last, Answering the Christian thunders with like voices; Then one vast fire, air, earth, and stream embraced, Which rocked as ‘twere beneath the mighty noises; Whilst the whole Rampart blazed like Etna, when The restless Titan hiccups in his den. And one enormous shout of “Allah!” rose In the same moment, loud as even the roar Of War’s most mortal Engines, to their foes Hurling defiance; city, stream and shore Resounded “Allah!” and the Clouds which close With thickening Canopy the Conflict o’er, Vibrate to the Eternal name; Hark! through All sounds it pierceth, “Allah! Allah! Hu!” * * Allah Hu! is properly the war cry of the Mussulmans, and they dwell long on the last syllable, which gives it a very wild and peculiar effect.48 (Don Juan VIII sts.7-8 and authorial note)

“les Turcs” become “the bristling Moslem”; “commencèrent de leur côté un feu très-vif, qui embrasa le reste de l’horizon” becomes three lines: Answering the Christian thunders with like voices; Then one vast fire, air, earth, and stream embraced, Which rocked as ’twere beneath the mighty noises …

… and “la place parut à nos yeux comme un volcan dont le feu sortait de toutes parts” is enlarged out of all recognition by the ideas of Etna, and the hiccupping Titan. Finally, “Un cri universel d’allah, qui se répétait tout autour de la ville, vint encore rendre plus extraordinaire cet instant, dont il est impossible de se faire une idée” is enlarged to an entire stanza, with a reference to Othello (“War’s most mortal Engines”), two “Allahs”, and a “Hu!” coupled with a prose note – increasing the exotic heroism of the Turks in a way that Castelnau didn’t intend. Byron’s virtuosity is now going hand-in-hand with a moral and political intention: at the same time as he makes English poetry out of French prose (for it’s clear that he wrote Don Juan with Essai sur l’Histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie open beside him) he 48: “Allah! Allah! Hu!”: not the first use by B. of this war-cry. Compare The Giaour, 734: At solemn sound of “Alla Hu!” or The Siege of Corinth, 668: God and the Prophet – Alla Hu!

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criticises it from a Russophobe, pro-Turkish, pro-Islamic, pacifist perspective, and alters it correspondingly as he translates and versifies.

The French Cook The penultimate example of Byron systematically using someone else’s book as subtext for Don Juan is the most singular: for he uses a cookery book. It was E.H.Coleridge who first pointed out that during the writing of Canto XV, sts.62-74, Byron seems to have had open by him The French Cook, a system of fashionable, practical and economical Cookery, adapted to the use of English families by Louis Eustache Ude (John Murray, 1813). Ude had emigrated during the French Revolution. He describes himself on the title-page as “Ci-devant chef to Louis XVI, and the Earl of Sefton, and steward to his Royal Highness the Duke of York”; he had also been maître d’hôtel at various clubs in London. His is not a plain person’s cookery-book, but one for conspicuous consumers, whose guests would expect three courses, each with several different dishes, in enormous quantities, and as much variety of choice as possible. Byron never refers to Ude’s book, just as he never refers in print to either Dalyell or Tully (but does to Castelnau). I find no evidence that Byron had looked beyond the plates, illustrating various table-layouts, at the front of the book. He starts epically: Great things were now to be atchieved at table, With massy plate for Armour, knives and forks For weapons; but what Muse since Homer’s able (His feasts are not the worst part of his works) To draw up in array a single day-bill Of modern dinners? – where more Mystery lurks In soups and sauces, or a sole ragoût, Than witches, b-tches, or physicians brew.

The meal at Norman Abbey is (in seeming) Homeric in size, but (in reality) Shakespearean in its effect – designed, like the ingredients in Macbeth’s cauldron, to ensnare and destroy – not via ambition and homicide, but via gluttony and indigestion – the latter pair being a metaphor for the former pair. Commentators are too polite to say that Byron is implying the English ruling class to be guilty of power-lust and murder as well as gross luxuriousness. He opens with ragoût (not in Ude), which he associates with transgression. See The Devil’s Drive (1813) l.3, where Satan “dined on some homicides done in Ragoût”: also Don Juan V ll.251-2, XIII ll.789-

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92, and Beppo, ll.68-70: “If … You … Would rather dine in sin on a ragout”. Why this curse should be put on what is only another word for “stew”, is a Byronic mystery. “… witches, b-tches” may be shorthand for “Annabella and Caroline Lamb” – we just don’t know. An analysis of just one stanza will be enough to give a small impression of the monstrous twelve-stanza whole. There was a goodly “Soupe à la bonne femme” – Though God knows whence it came from – there was, too, A Turbot for relief – of those who cram; Relieved with a dindon à la Périgueux; There also was – the Sinner that I am! How shall I get this Gourmand stanza through? Soupe à la Beauveau, whose Relief was Dorey – Relieved itself by Pork, for greater Glory.

“Soupe à la bonne femme” (Ude pl.2, top) is minced sorrel and cabbage melted in butter, moistened with broth and boiled; sugar added, and then thickened with egg-yolk and cream. “dindon à la Périgueux” (Ude pl.2, top) is roast turkey stuffed with chopped truffles and bacon, seasoned. Served with chestnut purée. “Soupe à la Beauveau” (Ude, pl.2, bottom) is balls of turnip blanched and boiled with clarified consommé (Ude has this last as a separate item) and sugar. Served with bread. In the couplet, Byron borrows from Ude Soupe à la Bonne Femme, relevée avec le Turbot, relevé avec le Dindon à la Périgueux. Relevé, writes Ude, means “removed by”, but Byron translates it with ironic literalness. A sufferer himself from acute indigestion (just like Potemkin), he knew that one huge dish was not likely to “relieve” another. Byron delights in piling-up the jargon of cookery, just as he delights in piling-up the jargon of siege warfare in Canto VII. His intention is to implicate us in the delight Lord Henry and his guests take in the enormous meal – to corrupt us, just as the Witches corrupt Macbeth, without our realising what he, the Witches, or the meal is doing. Just as each of the Witches’ prophecies seem to give Macbeth double, and then triple, reassurance, so “Dorey” seems to relieve the indigestion we suffer from “Soupe à la Beauveau”, and is itself seemingly relieved by “Pork” – though in fact each dish only exacerbates the discomfort produced by the previous one. Examples of heroes and heroines of Antiquity who have indulged themselves in like manner (Alexander, Apicius, Cleopatra,

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Lucullus)49 increase our illusion that this is the way to eat. After much more “mouth-watering” detail, Byron pulls the rug from under our feet: What are the fillets on the Victor’s brow To these? They’re rags or dust; where is the Arch Which nodded to the Nations’ spoils below? Where the triumphal Chariots’ haughty march? Gone – to where Victories must, like dinners, go; Further I shall not follow the research – But Oh! ye modern Heroes with your Cartridges, When will your names lend lustre even to Partridges? (Don Juan XV, sts.66-7)

“ … to where Victories must, like dinners, go” recalls Byron’s own joke at Canto III, sts.88-9: … to what straits old Time reduces Frail Man, when paper – even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his. – And when his bones are dust, his Grave a blank, His Station, Generation, even his Nation, Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank In Chronological commemoration, Some dull M.S. oblivion long has sank, Or Graven Stone found in a barrack’s station In digging the foundations of a Closet, May turn his name up, as a rare deposit.

These thoughts of lavatories and mortality (also Shakespearean: “Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay / Might stop a hole to keep the wind away”) are placed casually, en passant, like the reference to the contrasting example of Diogenes: they only disturb the luxuriant description of the menu if we think about it with more dispassion than Byron’s casual tone seems to invite us to think.

49: The Norman Abbey feast is Don Juan’s answer to Trimalchio’s feast in Petronius’ Sayricon.

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Thomas Hope’s Anastasius In Canto XI (written 1822), Don Juan arrives in England, which he idolises as the Land of the Free: but his first confrontation, on Shooter’s Hill, is anticlimactic: I say, Don Juan, wrapt in contemplation, Walked on behind his carriage o’er the summit, And, lost in wonder of so great a nation, Gave way to’t, since he could not overcome it; “And here”, he cried, “is Freedom’s chosen station; “Here peals the People’s voice, nor can entomb it “Racks, Prisons, Inquisitions; Resurrection “Awaits it each new Meeting or Election”. – “Here are chaste wives, pure lives; here people pay “But what they please – and if that things be dear, “‘Tis only that they love to throw away “Their cash to show how much they have a year; “Here laws are all inviolate – none lay “Traps for the traveller – every highway’s clear – “Here –” he was interrupted by a knife, With “Damn your eyes! your money or your life!” (Don Juan XI sts.9-10)

In Thomas Hope’s novel Anastasius (1820), the hero has arrived at the edge of the Arabian desert, and apostrophises it at length: … here no man obeys a sovereign he never saw, or is bound by laws he never heard of: here man will give, and women will deny: here no walls are raised to keep travellers out, nor are tolls demanded for letting them in: no one here legally detains the property of the stranger, nor churlishly avoids his person. Here I may consider all things my eyes embrace as my own; and in a succession of short easy saunters, roam free as air unto my journey’s end!” At this period of my reverie, out started from behind a little knoll a fierce looking Bedoween, who, couching his lance against my breast, haughtily bade me stop. (Anastasius III, 135-6)

The parallel is not fortuitous – for Byron often borrows from Anastasius, with maximum craft and invention. As another example: earlier, Anastasius has found himself on a slave-ship, where he witnesses the following altercation between Hamida, a beautiful maiden who is slender and “Tcherkassian” (read “Circassian”: Don Juan IV, 113, 8; 114,

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2) and her fellow females, most of whom are fat, and Georgian (Don Juan VI, 41, 2): With one accord the whole party rose up from their mattresses, and, gathering around the frightened Hamida, abused her for telling such falsehoods – she! a low bred, Tcherkassian, without faith, or manners – and that too of Georgians like them, who at home used every day to go to mass, and had as much victuals as ever they wished to eat! But Hamida’s own mettle rose at the base insinuation, and facing her assailants boldly: “It signifies much truly,” replied she in an ironical tone, “from what country we come, when none of us will ever see it again; and whether we had much or little of our religion, when we have all renounced it alike! And as to our fat – which is the most material point – that must be seen to be judged of.” “Then let it,” replied all the others in chorus; “and trust to us for seeing nothing!” and immediately they fell upon poor Hamida; forcibly tore open her feridgé, and displayed her bosom. It might not satisfy the utmost amplitude of Asiatic ideas, but I confess, though I looked hard, I perceived no deficiency (Anastasius I, 318-19).

This seems to have inspired in Byron not only the lines about “And though he certainly ran many risks, / Yet he could not at times keep by the way … From ogling all their charms from breast to backs” (Don Juan VI 29, 3/4/8), but the subtler (though no less male chauvinist) comedy of … Lolah demanded the new damsel’s name. “Juanna.” – Well – a pretty name enough – Kattinka asked her also whence she came. “From Spain” – “But where is Spain?” – “Don’t ask such stuff, “Nor show your Georgian ignorance, for shame!” Said Lolah, with an accent rather rough To poor Kattinka; “Spain’s an Island near “Marocco, betwixt Egypt and Tangier.” – (Don Juan VI, st.44)

There are other lifts (all creative adaptations) too numerous to list.50 When Murray had sent him Anastasius, Byron had said as little as possible about it: but with Lady Blessington, three years and several Don Juan cantos later, he was frank: 50: See Why did Byron envy Thomas Hope’s Anastasius? Keats-Shelley Review Vol. 24, 2010, pp.76-90; reprinted with enlargements in Aspects of Byron’s Don Juan, ed. Cochran (CSP 2013) and Byron’s Romantic Politics (CSP 2011).

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Byron spoke to-day in terms of high commendation of Hope’s “Anastasius;” said that he wept bitterly over many pages of it, and for two reasons, – first that he had not written it, and secondly that Hope had; for it was necessary to like a man excessively to pardon his writing such a book – a book, he said, excelling all recent productions, as much in wit and talent, as in true pathos. He added, he would have given his two most approved poems to have been the author of “Anastasius”.51

Hope – who was rich, much richer than Byron – had travelled widely in Turkey, Greece, Syria and Egypt between 1787 and 1795. His knowledge of the orient, particularly of Islam, was much deeper and more detailed than Byron’s, who, for example, never mentions the Sunni / Shia divide, which Hope jokes about as if it’s commonplace. He had no need of any Vathek. As with Dalyell, Tully, Castelnau and Ude, Thomas Hope provided a prose source upon which Byron relied heavily for the writing of his greatest work. But he wasn’t frank about it. Of the five writers mentioned (I exclude le Sage) only Castelnau appears in any of Byron’s book sale catalogues. Either Hobhouse or Murray must have “creamed off” the others.

51: Blessington p.51.

BYRON’S CHARITIES

I speak of two kinds of charity: practical charity (giving to the poor) and imaginative charity (empathising, suffering with others, allowing forgiveness to outweigh bitterness). Byron grew into both varieties; but it took some time. During his years of fame in London, Byron couldn’t be bothered about charity of either sort: I have declined presenting the Debtors’ Petition,1 being sick of parliamentary mummeries. I have spoken thrice; but I doubt my ever becoming an orator. My first was liked; the second and third—I don’t know whether they succeeded or not. I have never yet set to it con amore;—one must have some excuse to one’s self for laziness, or inability, or both, and this is mine. “Company, villainous company, hath been the spoil of me;”2—and then, I “have drunk medicines,”3 not to make me love others, but certainly enough to hate myself. 4

A debtor called W.J.Baldwin had asked him to present a petition in the Lords on his behalf. Lord Holland presented the petition instead. But then Lord Holland took his peer’s role seriously – as neither Byron, nor Falstaff, his alter ego here, ever did (or would, had Falstaff been a Lord). Falstaff, ever the parasite, depends on other people’s charity – mainly Mrs Quickly’s. Byron is a less readily detectable parasite, since when offered money legitimately, for his work, he either gives the copyright away, or shilly-shallies over whether to accept money … and even (on one occasion) tears it up and returns it. He did, however, “lend” Coleridge a hundred pounds; and wanted to give six hundred to William Godwin, but John Murray refused.

Unpublished. 1: See BLJ III 134-5 for B.’s letter Baldwin. Lord Holland presented the petition. 2: Henry IV I, III iii, 9-10. Falstaff speaks. 3: Henry IV I, II ii 22. Falstaff speaks. 4: London Journal, November 14th 1813 (from the first entry).

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Byron’s attitude to money was too confused to allow anything as wellregulated as charity to get a purchase on his habits. In verse, “charity” is the last quality we find: Oh! SOUTHEY! SOUTHEY! cease thy varied song! A Bard may chant too often and too long: As thou art strong in verse, in mercy, spare! A fourth, alas! were more than we could bear. But if, in spite of all the world can say, Thou still wilt verseward plod thy weary way; If still in Berkley Ballads most uncivil, Thou wilt devote old women to the devil, The babe unborn thy dread intent may rue: “God help thee,” SOUTHEY, and thy readers too. (EBSR ll.225-34)

There is no identification or empathy here. Byron had no motive for any. ———— When out of the country, and suddenly more money-conscious, in consequence (a) of harder bargaining with Murray and (b) of selling Newstead, his financial charity blossoms. Here is a note which R.B.Hoppner contributed to Moore’s Life about his generosity in Venice: He was also ever ready to assist the distressed, and he was most unostentatious in his charities: for besides considerable sums which he gave away to applicants at his own house, he contributed largely by weekly and monthly allowances to persons whom he had never seen, and who, as the money reached them by other hands, did not even know who was their benefactor. One or two instances might be adduced where his charity certainly bore an appearance of ostentation; one particularly, when he sent fifty louis d’or to a poor printer whose house had been burnt to the ground, and all his property destroyed; but even this was not unattended with advantage; for it in a manner compelled the Austrian authorities to do something for the poor sufferer, which I have no hesitation in saying they would not have done otherwise; and I attribute it entirely to the publicity of his donation, that they allowed the man the use of an unoccupied house belonging to the government until he could rebuild his own, or re-establish his business elsewhere. Other instances might be perhaps discovered where his liberalities proceeded from selfish, and not very worthy motives; but

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Byron’s Charities these are rare, and it would be unjust in the extreme to assume them as proofs of his character.5

In Ravenna, hearing that Byron was to be expelled from the city, the beggars sent two petitions to the Papal authorities requesting that such a cornucopia of largesse should be allowed to stay. In Pisa, the Zambelli papers record frequent payments “Ai Frati Cappucini, Teresiani, e Notolini in tanto pane per elemossina settimanale” (To the Capuchin, Teresan and Notolini friars, for weekly charity”. One single entry is “Alla vedova vecchia Priami madre d’un povero cieco” (To the old widow Priami, mother of a poor blind son). Byron was never this charitable in England: generous to some writers, but not to the local poor.6 In verse, the same rule does not at first apply. Here, from Beppo, is his passage about William Sotheby (“They” are Turkish ladies): They cannot read – and so don’t lisp in Criticism, Nor write – and so they don’t affect the Muse, Were never caught in epigram or witticism, Have no romances, sermons, plays, reviews – In Harams Learning soon would make a pretty Schism! But luckily these Beauties are no “Blues” – No bustling Botherby have they to show ‘em “That Charming passage in the last new Poem!” No solemn Antique Gentleman of rhyme, Who, having angled all his life for Fame, And getting but a nibble at a time, Still fussily keeps fishing on; the Same Small “Triton of the Minnows,” the Sublime Of Mediocrity, the furious tame, The Echo’s Echo, Usher of the School Of female Wits, boy bards, in short a fool. A Stalking Oracle of awful phrase, The approving “Good!” (by no means GOOD in law) Humming like flies around the newest blaze, The Bluest of Bluebottles you e’er saw, Teazing with blame, excruciating with praise, Gorging the slightest slice of Flattery raw, Translating tongues he knows not even by letter, And Sweating Plays so middling, Bad were Better. – 5: Moore’s Life, pp.230-1. 6: Zambelli Papers, B.L.Add.Mss.46876 f.30. Further examples of B.’s charity as recorded by Zambelli will be found at LBAR pp.264-5.

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One hates an Author that’s all Author; fellows In foolscap Uniforms turned up with Ink; So very anxious, clever, fine, and jealous, One don’t know what to say to them, or think, Unless to puff them with a pair of Bellows; Of Coxcombry’s worst Coxcombs, even the Pink Are preferable to these Shreds of Paper, These unquenched Snuffings of the Midnight taper. – (Beppo sts.72-5)

In its (seemingly unmotivated) malice, this is even less “charitable” than the lines about Southey from English Bards, quoted above. It was Southey himself who effected the change in Byron – assisted by Shelley. In 1821 Southey published his sycophantic A Vision of Judgment, with its preface referring to Men of diseased hearts and depraved imaginations, who, forming a system of opinions to suit their own unhappy course of conduct, have rebelled against the holiest ordinances of human society, and hating that revealed religion which, with all their efforts and bravadoes, they are unable entirely to disbelieve, labour to make others as miserable as themselves, by infecting them with a virus that eats into the soul! The school which they have set up may properly be called the Satanic school; for though their productions breathe the spirit of Belial in their lascivious parts, and the spirit of Moloch in those loathsome images of atrocities and horrors which they delight to represent, they are more especially characterised by a Satanic spirit of pride and audacious impiety, which still betrays the wretched feeling of hopelessness wherewith it is allied. This evil is political as well as moral, for indeed moral and political evils are inseparably connected. Truly it has been affirmed by one of our ablest and clearest reasoners, that “the destruction of governments may be proved by and deduced from the general corruption of the subjects’ manners, as a direct and natural cause thereof, by a demonstration as certain as any in the mathematics.” There is no maxim more frequently enforced by Machiavelli, than that where the manners of a people are generally corrupted, there the government cannot long subsist, . . a truth which all history exemplifies; and there is no means whereby that corruption can be so surely and rapidly diffused, as by poisoning the waters of literature. Let the rulers of the state look to this, in time! But, to use the words of South, if “our physicians think the best way of curing a disease is to pamper it, . . the Lord in mercy prepare the kingdom to suffer, what He by miracle only can prevent!

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At about the same time as he read this, Byron read Shelley’s Adonais, an elegy based on the idea that Southey had written the review of Endymion which had caused the death of Keats. It contains this (directed at Southey): Live thou, whose infamy is not thy fame! Live! fear no heavier chastisement from me, Thou noteless blot on a remember’d name! But be thyself, and know thyself to be! And ever at thy season be thou free To spill the venom when thy fangs o’erflow; Remorse and Self-contempt shall cling to thee; Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret brow, And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt—as now. (Adonais, st. 37)

To answer vindictiveness with vindictiveness – especially on such slender evidence as Shelley possessed (for the review had not killed Keats, and was by John Wilson Croker anyway) was not – Byron could see – the way forward. More humour and restraint was needed, if only to shame someone as far beyond the pale as Southey (and, as Byron could see, as far beyond the pale as the supposedly gentle and gentlemanly Shelley). Therefore, when in Byron’s travesty The Vision of Judgement, Southey’s Vision proves so impossible to listen to that even George III himself is moved to protest, all that happens to the Laureate is this: Saint Peter – who has hitherto been known For an impetuous Saint – upraised his keys, And at the fifth line knocked the poet down – Who fell like Phaeton – but more at ease – Into his lake – for there he did not drown, A different web being by the Destinies Woven for the Laureate’s final wreath – whene’er Reform shall happen, either here or there. – He first sunk to the bottom, like his works, But soon rose to the surface, like himself, For all Corrupted things are buoyed like Corks, By their own rottenness – light as an Elf, Or Wisp that flits o’er a Morass – he lurks It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf In his own den, to scrawl some “Life” or “Vision” – As Wellborn says, “the Devil turned Precisian.” – (TVOJ sts.104-5)

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There are many strange undercurrents here. Everyone who knew them both commented on how much Shelley looked like a young Southey: and there’s no doubt that Byron saw Southey as a horrible, talentless, doppelgänger version of himself. It was a recognition of strange human togetherness which Byron saw, but to which Shelley was blind. Thus, Byron’s charity in verse eventually caught up with his charity in “real” life.

ALTERING THE FOCUS: BYRON’S READING OF THE RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER

On October 18th 1815 Byron wrote to the author of The Ancient Mariner: Last Spring I saw Wr. Scott – he repeated to me a considerable portion of an unpublished poem1 of yours – the wildest & finest I ever heard in that kind of composition – the title he did not mention – but I think the heroine’s name was Geraldine – at all events – the “toothless mastiff bitch” – & the “witch Lady” – the descriptions of the hall – the lamp suspended from the image – & more particularly of the Girl herself as she went forth in the evening – all took a hold on my imagination which I never shall wish to shake off. – I mention this – not for the sake of boring you with compliments – but as a prelude to the hope that this poem is or is to be in the volumes you are now about to publish. – I do not know that even “Love” or the “Ancient Mariner” are so impressive – & to me there are few things in our tongue beyond these two productions. – – Wr. Scott is a staunch & sturdy admirer of yours – & with a just appreciation of your capacity – deplored to me the want of inclination & exertion which prevented you from giving full scope to your mind. –2

Scott had recited much of Christabel from memory, having read it once: Byron, six months later, not having read it at all, remembers fragments vividly from Scott’s recitation. His praise is sincere, and he had remembered the verse-form of Christabel well enough to have imitated it in some sections of The Siege of Corinth, acknowledging his debt in a prose note. Unpublished. 1: Christabel. 2: B. to Coleridge, October 18th 1815 (BLJ IV 321-2).

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His bracketing of Love with The Mariner, however – which is rather like bracketing The Phoenix and the Turtle with King Lear – is odd, and is designed to throw Coleridge off the scent, for (starting, indeed, with Siege), Byron took several themes from The Mariner and re-worked them in his own idiom, placing them in new contexts which give them a more Byronic meaning. In the 1991 Byron Journal,3 Warren Stevenson traces a number of Mariner themes through to some of Byron’s best works, principally The Prisoner of Chillon, Darkness, Mazeppa, and Don Juan II. They are: isolation, death-in-life, and an emergence from the last via a sudden, blessed awareness of the natural world. Alp in The Siege experiences the first two, but, faced with the chance of blessedness in the shape of Francesca’s ghost, rejects it (Stevenson doesn’t mention him). Thus Bonnivard, the Prisoner of Chillon: What next befell me then and there I know not well – I never knew, First came the loss of light and air, And then of darkness too; I had no thought, no feeling – none; Among the stones I stood – a Stone, And was – scarce conscious what I wist – As shrubless Crags within the mist, For all was blank, and bleak, and grey; It was not night – it was not day – It was not even the dungeon-light So hateful to my heavy sight, But vacancy – absorbing space, And fixedness – without a place; There were no stars – no earth – no time – No check – no change – no good – no crime – But Silence – and a stirless breath Which neither was of life, nor death; A Sea of stagnant Idleness Blind – boundless – mute – and motionless. (ll.231-50)

Which parallels, in its horrid banality

3: Stevenson, Warren. Byron and Coleridge: The Eagle and the Dove, BJ 19 (1991) pp.114-27.

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Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on the wide, wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. (ll.232-9)

The Prisoner continues: A Light broke in upon my brain; It was the carol of a bird; It ceased and then it came again – The sweetest song ear ever heard; And mine was thankful till my eyes Ran over with the glad surprize, And they that moment could not see I was the mate of misery … (ll.251-8)

This parallels Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes. Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The selfsame moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. (ll.271-91)

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Warren Stevenson finds corresponding parallels in the other Byron poems listed, except that both Mazeppa and Juan have, as their blessed spirits upon awakening, the Cossack Maiden, and Haidee: unlike Alp, they accept them, the Maiden and Haidee having the advantage over Francesca in that they’re flesh and blood. So far, so good: but at once we see differences which Stevenson does not mention. The Mariner deserves his ordeal, for shooting the Albatross is as close as it’s possible to get to re-crucifying Christ; whereas The Prisoner doesn’t seem to have done anything to warrant incarceration, and the transgressions of Mazeppa and Don Juan are of the carnal sort which produce smiles of identification. The Mariner’s sin is shared with his shipmates … [But when the fog cleared off, they justify the same, and thus make themselves accomplices in the crime.] Nor dim nor red, like God’s own head, The glorious Sun uprist: Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist. ’T was right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. (ll.97-102)

… whereas Juan and Mazeppa (and lover, in Juan’s case) are alone in their wrongdoings, which have no social ramifications. Last but not least, the Mariner repents and atones, while The Prisoner has nothing to feel guilty about, and guilt seems foreign to the sensibilities of the two other protagonists. Neither of them ever pray (not, at least, after their sinning). The Mariner is himself blessed by the vision of the seraphband – no such visions visit Byron’s heroes (or do they?) Byron is, in fact, satirical at the expence of Coleridge’s poem – especially in Don Juan. For Juan, isolation and death-in-life are reduced economically to As for the other two they could not swim, So Nobody arrived on Shore but him. (Don Juan II 106, 7-8)

Instead of awe and love of another natural being, we have At length they caught two Boobies, and a Noddy, And then they left off eating the dead body. (Don Juan II 82, 7-8)

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And in the place of the Seraph-band, we’re given About this time a beautiful white bird, Webfooted, not unlike a Dove in Size And plumage (probably it might have erred Upon its course) passed oft before their eyes, And tried to perch, although it saw and heard The men within the boat; and in this Guise It came and went, and fluttered round them till Night fell: this seemed a better Omen still. – - – - But in this case I also must remark ’Twas well this bird of Promise did not perch Because the Tackle of our shattered bark Was not so safe for roosting as a Church; And had it been the Dove from Noah’s Ark, Returning there from her successful Search, Which in their way that moment chanced to fall, They would have ate her, Olive-branch and All. (Don Juan II sts.94-5)

Byron has taken Coleridge’s ideas, deprived them of anything “supernatural, spiritual, or spectral” (still less “sacramental”),4 and secularised them systematically. He had insulted Coleridge already in Canto I (“Thou shalt believe in Milton, Dryden, Pope, / Thou shalt not set up Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey; / Because the first is crazed beyond all hope, / The second drunk …” and Coleridge (unlike the other two) had actually answered him; he did so with suitable irony on September 4th, 1819: My Lord, / That I should be selected by you to share such immortality as Time may confer upon your Don Juan demands my acknowledgement, the quality of which is enlarged by the charge of inebriety that you prefer against me. Had you adorned me with indolence and irresolution the commendation had been just, but the more elegant acquirement of intemperance it were flattery to attribute to me. This example of your Lordship’s taste and knowledge would embolden me to esteem you as among the first of our great writers if you would condescend first to avoid a too servile flattery of your contemporaries, and next to obtain correct information on the habits of those you celebrate. The sobriety of this letter

4: See Gavin Hopps (ed.) Byron’s Ghosts (Liverpool 2013), passim.

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is the unhappy proof of the extravagance of your praise. I am / your Lordship’s obedient sober servant, / S.T.Coleridge.5

But he mentions no borrowings, or amusing inversions, from his own great work.

5: Letters ed. Griggs, IV 948.

DON JUAN: CONFLUENCE-POINT OF MANY TRADITIONS

Childe Harold and the Turkish Tales are not rooted in any major poetic tradition. The last thing Childe Harold (written in Spenserians) resembles is The Faerie Queene: Byron studied, instead, James Thomson’s The Castle of Indolence, and James Beattie’s The Minstrel (with small doses of Wright’s unSpenserian Horae Ionicae). Although he mentions Ariosto in connection with Childe Harold, there is again scant resemblance, since Ariosto employs a many-stranded narrative, and Harold’s adventures get less and less emphasis as his poem progresses, until, finally, he vanishes from his own story. The Giaour and The Bride of Abydos, with their octosyllabics and obscure oriental vocabulary, are in easy contention with Scott’s Marmion and The Lay of the Last Minstrel, with their forays into obscure Scots vocabulary: the later Turkish Tales borrow haphazardly and without scruple (see essays above), but develop no tradition – least of all the Augustan tradition which Byron worshipped. The Corsair may have been written in old-fashioned couplets in response to the protests of Lord Holland, but there is no Augustan polish in either its writing or its subjectmatter. With the three ottava rima poems, this all changes. Beppo, slight as it appears, relies for its jokes on a knowledge of both Othello and The Odyssey, to say nothing of Byron’s own earlier tales, which it parodies. The Vision of Judgement, as I have demonstrated,1 brings together over two thousand years of Biblical, classical, and modern writing, to destroy the sycophantic Vision of Robert Southey, a work based on nothing at all except the renegade Laureate’s need to extol Power and ingratiate himself with it. Southey’s inclusion, in the welcoming committee which greets George III at Heaven’s gate, of Milton, “no longer here to Kings and to Hierarchs hostile”, would have struck Byron as the ultimate, idiot blasphemy against tradition. Unpublished. 1: See One Ton Per Square Foot: the Antecedents of The Vision of Judgement. Keats-Shelley Review, 19, 2006, pp.64-75; rpt. in, in Wilson, Cheryl A. (ed.) Byron, Heritage and Legacy, Palgrave, 2008.

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Don Juan is a homage to tradition even more massive than The Vision of Judgement: it inherits and develops at least three centrally important streams of European writing, and one marvels at the gargantuan feat of reading, assimilation and synthesis which Byron’s memory and creativity have performed. ————— One tradition which it does not develop, however, is that of the conventional Don Juan, the serial fornicator impelled to one act of seduction after another in endless sequence. This began with the early Spanish play Don Juan Tenorio by Tirso de Molina, went French with Molière’s Dom Juan, crossed the channel and became Shadwell’s The Libertine (by which time its villainous protagonist had consolidated blasphemy and treachery as accompaniments to his purely carnal transgressions), and was finally immortalised in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, which, by surrounding its hero with self-deluding mediocrities, confers upon him a paradoxical heroism. Byron shows, surprisingly, no detailed knowledge of any of these works. That he was aware of them is shown in an early stanza, which promises that his Juan will resemble his predecessors: Sagest of women, even of widows, She [Inez] Resolved that Juan should be quite a paragon, And worthy of the noblest pedigree (His Sire was of Castile, his Dam from Arragon); Then for accomplishments of Chivalry, In case our Lord the King should go to war again, He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress – or a Nunnery. (Don Juan I st.38)

But the promise in the “gunnery / Nunnery” couplet is not fulfilled. Byron changed his mind very early on in the poem’s composition. His Don Juan inverts the message of all its predecessors by making its hero the passive victim of predatory women. Byron’s assertion was that this was truer to life. Thomas Medwin reports him as saying: “You see I am true to Nature in making the advances come from the females”.2 ————— 2: Medwin p.165.

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The obvious tradition from which Don Juan stems is the serio-comic Italian tradition of ottava rima: the works of Pulci, Berni, Boiardo, Ariosto, and the more modern Giambattista Casti. Hookham Frere’s Whistlecraft, dull as it is, gave Byron the immediate spur for Beppo, by demonstrating that ottava rima could work well in English: but he had been studying Italian poetry since his years in London, and was wellacquainted with the style, its flexibility and its antiquity (“the Pulci style, which the fools in England think was invented by Whistlecraft—it is as old as the hills in Italy”).3 From it come his poem’s fascination with sirens and enchantresses, shipwrecks, battles, sieges, and food (all treated in a modern, not a medieval idiom). From it he learns the art of digression, and how to employ a comical self-image to bind the work into a unity. His implicatory addresses to his female readership are derived from Casti especially. He advertises his indebtedness freely: To the kind reader of our sober clime This way of writing will appear Exotic; Pulci was Sire of the half-serious Rhyme Who sang when Chivalry was more Quixotic And revelled in the fancies of the Time, True knights, chaste dames, huge Giants, kings despotic; But all these, save the last, being Obsolete, I chose a modern subject as more meet. – (Don Juan IV st.6) But let me to my Story: I must own If I have any fault, it is digression – Leaving my people to proceed alone, While I soliloquize beyond expression; But these are my Addresses from the Throne, Which put off business to the ensuing Session; Forgetting each omission is a loss to The World, not quite as great as Ariosto. (Don Juan III st.96)

————— Behind Byron’s indebtedness to Italian poetry is indebtedness to a tradition of even greater antiquity: the classical tradition of Greek and 3: B. to Moore, October 1st 1821 (text from Moore’s Life II 541-2; BLJ VIII 22830).

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Roman literature in which he was educated. This indebtedness is advertised with facetious deceptiveness in the list of authors whom Don Juan’s mother will not let him be taught: Ovid’s a rake, as half his verses show him, Anacreon’s morals are a still worse sample, Catullus scarcely has a decent poem, I don’t think Sappho’s Ode a good example, Although Longinus tells us there is no hymn Where the Sublime soars forth on wings more ample; But Virgil’s Songs are pure – except that horrid one Beginning with “Formosum Pastor Corydon”. Lucretius’ irreligion is too strong For early stomachs, to prove wholesome food; I can’t help thinking Juvenal was wrong, Although no doubt his real intent was good, For speaking out so plainly in his song, So much indeed as to be downright rude; And then what proper person could be partial To all those nauseous Epigrams of Martial? (Don Juan I sts.42-3)

The joke is double, firstly because, although Juan is denied the knowledge of life which such authors would (or should) have taught him, his story is told by a poet who demonstrates an intimate knowledge of them all; secondly because the poet whose influence is clearest in the ottava rima satires – Horace – is not in the list of the prohibited. There are more references to Horace in Don Juan than to any other writer. In Childe Harold Byron bade farewell to Horace (see CHP IV st.77); and indeed Horace’s self-satirical persona would have had a most damaging effect on that inflated work. But in Don Juan he returns in triumph: “Non Ego hoc ferrem calida Juventâ 4 “Consule Planco”, Horace said, and so * Say I; by which quotation there is meant a Hint that some six or seven good years ago (Long ere I dreamt of dating from the Brenta) I was most ready to return a blow, And would not brook at all this sort of thing 4: Horace said: in Odes, III 14, last verse: I should not have born such things in the heat of my youth when Plancus was Consul. A general reference to the way age mellows temper.

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To speak of just one famous work the theme of which Byron develops, Ovid’s Metamorphoses: in the depiction of change and transformation, Byron is a step in advance of Ovid. Rather than concentrate on creatures who merely change from one shape to another, he writes about creatures who change appearance, without changing their bodies, even as you look at them. Here are some examples. First, a non-human one, the rainbow which appears to the starving sailors in Canto II: It changed of Course; a heavenly Cameleon, The Airy Child of Vapour and the Sun, Brought forth in Purple, cradled in Vermilion, Baptized in molten Gold, and swathed in Dun, Glittering like Crescents o’er a Turk’s Pavillion, And blending every Colour into One, Just like a black eye in a recent Scuffle (For Sometimes we must box without the Muffle.) (Don Juan II st.91)

Next, General Suvorov (or Suwarrow, or Suvaroff – his very name is indeterminate): Suwarrow chiefly was on the alert, Surveying, drilling, ordering, jesting, pondering; For the Man was, we safely may assert, A thing to wonder at beyond most wondering; Hero, buffoon, half demon and half dirt, Praying, instructing, desolating, plundering; Now Mars, now Momus, and when bent to storm A Fortress, Harlequin in Uniform. – (Don Juan VII st.55)

Last but not least, Junius in The Vision of Judgement sums up the whole transformational phenomenon. He changes, while remaining unchanged – a bit like his creator:

5: Horace, Odes I, 4 29-31: omitted are the words “nec puer”: neither women “nor boys” have the power to charm him any more.

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The more intently the Ghosts gazed the less Could they distinguish whose the features were – The devil himself seemed puzzled even to guess – They varied like a dream – now here, now there – And several people swore from out the press They knew him perfectly, and one could swear – He was his father – upon which another Was sure he was his mother’s cousin’s brother, Another that he was a duke – or knight – An orator – a lawyer – or a priest – A Nabob – a Man Midwife; but the Wight Mysterious changed his countenance at least As oft as they their minds, though in full sight He stood, the puzzle only was increased – The Man was a phantasmagoria in Himself, he was so volatile and thin! The moment that you had pronounced him one, Presto! his face changed & he was another – And when that change was hardly well put on, It varied till I don’t think his own mother (If that he had a mother) would her son Have known, he shifted so from one to t’other, Till guessing from a pleasure grew a task, At this epistolary “Iron Mask”! (TVOJ sts.76-8)

There are Ovidian precedents for these rainbow-images. Here is the description of the fabrics woven by Pallas Athene and Arachne in Metamorphoses Book VI: illic et Tyrium quae purpura sensit aenum texitur et tenues parvi discriminis umbrae; qualis ab imbre solent percussis solibus arcus inficere ingenti longum curvamine caelum; in quo diversi niteant cum mille colores, transitus ipse tamen spectantia lumina fallit: usque adeo, quod tangit, idem est; tamen ultima distant. illic et lentum filis inmittitur aurum et vetus in tela deducitur argumentum. (Metamorphoses VI 61-9) [“There, shades of purple, dyed in Tyrian bronze vessels, are woven into the cloth, and also lighter colours, shading off gradually. The threads that touch seem the same, but the extremes are distant, as when, often, after a rainstorm, the expanse of the sky, struck by the sunlight, is stained by a rainbow in one vast arch, in which a thousand separate colours shine, but

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the eye itself still cannot see the transitions. There, are inserted lasting threads of gold, and an ancient tale is spun in the web.”] 6

But Byron’s obvious model for a continuously self-changing person is Ovid’s Proteus: sunt, quibus in plures ius est transire figuras ut tibi, conplexi terram maris incola, Proteu. nam modo te iuvenem, modo te videre leonem, nunc violentus aper, nunc, quem tetigisse timerent, anguis eras, modo te faciebant cornua taurum; saepe lapis poteras, arbor quoque saepe videri, interdum, faciem liquidarum imitatus aquarum, flumen eras, interdum undis contrarius ignis. (Metamorphoses VIII 730-7) [“… there are those who, once changed in form, retain that transformation: there are others who are allowed to transmute into many shapes: you, for instance, Proteus, inhabitant of the earth-encircling sea. A moment ago they saw you as a young man, then as a lion: now as a raging boar, then as a serpent, they fear to touch: and, in a moment, horns revealed you as a bull. Often you might have appeared as a stone, often, also, as a tree: sometimes, you formed the likeness of running water, and became a river: sometimes fire, water’s opposite.”]7

The Ovidian version of transformation, existing in time, is dynamic, and allows the chance of amelioration. The Byronic version is more unsettling because less predictable, less comprehensible, and, in a way, static. If a man is, for example, “all things unto people of all sorts” like Juan (14, 31, 2) or “all things to all men” like Lord Henry (16, 71, 2), there’s no telling which aspect he’ll reveal next, or which way he’ll jump next, unless he really is a chameleon – “heavenly” or otherwise – in which case he’s at the mercy of his context, and has no control over his own nature – a thesis which the faux-Calvinist Byron would greet with relief. In Juan’s case his “mobility” is sincere: in Lord Henry’s it’s calculated (by a kind of moral inertia), like that of the poet in Canto III, who “was a Man who had seen many changes, / And always changed as true as any Needle …” ————— 6: Translations from Metamorphoses are from 7: See also the way Vertumnus appears to Pomona at Metamorphoses XIV 643-53.

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The third tradition which gives Don Juan life is a tradition of, principally, prose writers, to all of whom Byron refers at different points in the poem and in his correspondence about it: D. Juan will be known by and bye for what it is intended a satire on abuses of the present states of Society – and not an eulogy of vice; – it may be now and then voluptuous – I can’t help that – Ariosto is worse – Smollett (see Lord Strutwell in vol 2d. of R. R) ten times worse – and Fielding no better. – – No Girl will ever be seduced by reading D. J. – no – no – she will go to Little’s poems – & Rousseau’s romans – for that – or even to the immaculate De Stael – – they will en= / =courage her – & not the Don – who laughs at that – and – and – most other things. – But never mind – “Cà irà!” –8 Don Juan shall be an entire horse or none. – If the objection be to the indecency the Age which applauds the “Bath Guide” & Little’s poems – & reads Fielding & Smollett still – may bear with that; – if to the poetry – I will take my chance. – I will not give way to all the Cant of Christendom – I have been cloyed with applause & sickened with abuse; – at present – I care for little but the Copyright, – I have imbibed a great love for money – let me have it –9

All these writers refer affectionately to one another. Thus Rabelais shows knowledge of Pulci, Cervantes shows knowledge of Pulci, Montaigne belongs to the same universally-sceptical tradition as Pulci and Cervantes, and Sterne admires them all, going back further still: By the tomb-stone of Lucian––if it is in being––if not, why then by his ashes! by the ashes of my dear Rabelais, and dearer Cervantes!––my father and my uncle Toby’s discourse upon Time and Eternity––was a discourse devoutly to be wished for! (Tristram Shandy II 12)

When, at the couplet to Don Juan I stanza 24, little Juan empties a chamber-pot over the narrator, it is the most discreet of references to the great catastrophe of Tristram Shandy’s young life, caused, as we all know, by the absence of such an utensil. 8: B. to Murray, December 25th 1822 (text from NLS Ms.43493; BLJ X 67-70). 9: B. to Hobhouse and Kinnaird, January 19th 1819 (text from NLS Ms.43440; BLJ VI 91-2).

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Byron’s defence of his serio-comic style is famous: I will answer your friend C.V.10 who objects to the quick succession of fun and gravity – as if in that case the gravity did not (in intention at least) heighten the fun. – His metaphor is that “we are never scorched and drenched at the same time?” – Blessings on his experience! – Ask him these questions about “scorching and drenching.” – Did he never play at Cricket or walk a mile in hot weather? – Did he never spill a dish of tea over his testicles in handing the cup to his charmer to the great shame of his nankeen breeches? – Did he never swim in the sea at Noonday with the Sun in his eyes and on his head – which all the foam of Ocean could not cool? did he never draw his foot out of a tub of too hot water damning his eyes and his valet’s? did he never inject for a Gonorrhea? – or make water through an ulcerated Urethra? – Was he ever in a Turkish bath – that marble paradise of sherbet and sodomy? – was he ever in a cauldron of boiling oil like St John? – orv in the sulphureous waves of hell? (where he ought to be for his “scorching and drenching at the same time”) did he never tumble into a river or lake fishing – and sit in his wet cloathes in the boat – or on the bank afterwards “scorched and drenched” like a true sportsman? – – – – “Oh for breath to utter!”11 – – – but {make} him my compliments – he is a clever fellow for all that – a very clever fellow. – –12

In his argument that our emotions are often confusingly muddled, he receives support from Montaigne: Thence it is, that we see not only children, who innocently obey and follow nature, often laugh and cry at the same thing, but not one of us can boast, what journey soever he may have in hand that he has the most set his heart upon, but when he comes to part with his family and friends, he will find something that troubles him within; and though he refrain his tears yet he puts foot in the stirrup with a sad and cloudy countenance. And what gentle flame soever may warm the heart of modest and 10: “C.V” is Francis Cohen. 11: Shakespeare, Henry IV I II iv 238. 12: B. to Murray, August 12th 1819 (text from B.L.Ashley 4743; BLJ VI 206-10).

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wellborn virgins, yet are they fain to be forced from about their mothers’ necks to be put to bed to their husbands … Neither is it strange to lament a person dead whom a man would by no means should be alive. When I rattle my man, I do it with all the mettle I have, and load him with no feigned, but downright real curses; but the heat being over, if he should stand in need of me, I should be very ready to do him good: for I instantly turn the leaf. When I call him calf and coxcomb, I do not pretend to entail those titles upon him for ever; neither do I think I give myself the lie in calling him an honest fellow presently after. No one quality engrosses us purely and universally. … Just so the soul variously and imperceptibly darts out her passions.13

Smollett, too, nails his colours to the mast: … the world actually began to be infected with the spirit of knight-errantry, when Cervantes, by an inimitable piece of ridicule, reformed the taste of mankind, representing chivalry in the right point of view, and converting romance to purposes far more useful and entertaining, by making it assume the sock, and point out the follies of ordinary life. The same method has been practised by other Spanish and French authors, and by none more successfully than by Monsieur Le Sage, who, in his Adventures of Gil Blas, has described the knavery and foibles of life, with infinite humour and sagacity. The following sheets I have modelled on his plan, taking me liberty, however, to differ from him in the execution, where thought his particular situations were uncommon, extravagant, or peculiar to the country in which the scene is laid. The disgraces of Gil Blas are, for the most part, such as rather excite mirth than compassion; he himself laughs at them; and his transitions from distress to happiness, or at least ease, are so sudden, that neither the reader has time to pity him, nor himself to be acquainted with affliction.14

For Byron’s borrowing from le Sage’s Gil Blas, see essays above. Smollett (Smellfungus, as he’s called by Sterne) in addition to his 13: Montaigne, Essays, Book I, Chapter XXXVII: “All things have their season”. 14: Roderick Random, Preface.

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damning social satire (the phrase describing London, “The Devil’s drawing room” at Don Juan X 81, 3 is from Roderick Random XVIII), has a preoccupation with things of the body which we need not quote, but which finds Juanesque echoes in such things as the use of the tomb of Gaston de Foix as a public toilet (IV 103 8), Potemkin’s death from indigestion (VII st.36), and the medical Latin stanza 41 in Canto IX, which is a prescription for simultaneous upward and downward evacuation (see elsewhere) – one of Smollett’s perennial obsessions. A famous section from Don Quixote (I 18) has Quixote and Sancho vomiting over one another. In Don Juan, emotions are often subordinate to bodily necessity: “And Oh! if e’er I should forget, I swear – “But that’s impossible, and cannot be – “Sooner shall this blue Ocean melt to air, “Sooner shall Earth resolve itself to Sea, “Than I resign thine image, Oh! my fair! “Or think of anything excepting thee; “A mind diseased no remedy can physic” (Here the Ship gave a lurch, and he grew Seasick.) (Don Juan II st.19)

To this procession of humorous humanists we have only to add Fielding (“the prose Homer of human nature”)15 for the list to be complete. But, admire Fielding as he may, Byron depicts his hero as quite different either from the chaste Joseph Andrews, who remains faithful to Fanny Goodwill throughout the book, or from the unchaste Tom Jones. Tom, each time he falls – with Molly, with Lady Bellaston, or with Mrs Waters – feels bad about it because he’s being unfaithful to his true love, Sophie Western. He feels morally responsible for his actions. Don Juan is always at the mercy either of circumstances, or women, or both: he is never responsible for his actions. The poem ends abruptly, and Byron dies, just as we sense Juan to be approaching an entanglement which may force him to make a decision.

15: Ravenna Journal, January 4th, 1821; BLJ VIII 11.

WHY DID BYRON GO BACK TO GREECE?

Guess darkly, and you will seldom err. At present, I shall say no more, and, perhaps—but no matter.1 If I live ten years longer, you will see, however, that it is not over with me—I don’t mean in literature, for that is nothing; and it may seem odd enough to say, I do not think it my vocation. But you will see that I shall do something or other—the times and fortune permitting—that, ‘like the cosmogony, or creation of the world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages.’2 But I doubt whether my constitution will hold out. I have, at intervals, exorcised it most devilishly.3

Many of Byron’s motives for his fatal return to Greece in 1823 have to be intuited, he was so reserved about them. Love of the Greeks was not one of them, though nostalgic love of Greece was. Neither was any hope for Greece’s political future. Medwin reports: He [Byron] out-anastasiused Anastasius in his view of the Greek character. He used to say, “that the Greeks were so fallen, that it would be a vain attempt to raise them. One might as well hope to re-animate a corpse.” Words that had no sincerity in them, for perhaps at that very time, with his usual love for mystification he had decided in his own mind to join their cause. In Byron were, as I have said, two natures – the man and the poet were different entities. This incongruity between his poetical sentiments and his prose ones, was very remarkable. In the case of the Greeks, the former prevailed. Shelley used to say that “on this subject, or any other, it was not easy to see his mind through the mists he delighted to throw around it”.4

Unpublished. 1: B. to Moore, March 12th 1814 (Ms. not found; text from Moore’s Life I 537-8; BLJ IV 79-81). 2: Goldsmith, The Vicar of Wakefield, XIV. 3: B. to Moore, February 28th 1817 (text from Moore’s Life II 78-80; BLJ V 1767). 4: Life of Shelley, from pp.329-32, quoted HVSV p.276.

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The last thing he had was a vision of or plan for Greece’s political future. One so impractical and anti-democratic as Byron was in England was not the man to plan a post-Ottoman political settlement, with voting franchises, upper and lower houses, constituency-mapping and so on. In Byron’s War,5 Roderick Beaton elucidates Byron’s three-point plan for Greek nationhood (derived only from other men’s reminiscences) thus: Greece needed (a) a central government, (b) an economic policy, based at first on loans, and (c) a foreign policy. Byron never even wrote these rudimentary things down. Had he made more of them, it’s hard to see what reaction he would have got from the Greeks, who were largely illiterate, and whose allegiance was not patriotic, to a country, but feudal, to strong local leaders.6 What he could not have anticipated was the 1832 appointment of Prince Otto of Bavaria as King of Greece. Had he not warned them of such things already? Trust not for freedom to the Franks – They have a king who buys and sells; In native swords, and native ranks, The only hope of Courage dwells; But Turkish force, and Latin fraud, Would break your Shield, however broad. –7

His primary motive for leaving Italy was Teresa Guiccioli, by whose company he was bored,8 and whose family were under constant threat for being so close to him. Only a supposedly heroic adventure such as Freeing Greece from the Turkish Yoke could provide him with a good enough reason for deserting her. If he hoped to ease the Gambas’ situation, he failed, for Teresa’s brother Pietro accompanied him to Greece and died the year after he did, and her father, Ruggero, was jailed anyway. As I’ve argued above in the chapter on Kinnaird, the perpetual need to economise, an activity to which he was stranger, was becoming insupportable: the massive cause of Greece gave him reason to order

5: Roderick Beaton, Byron’s War (Cambridge 2013), p.226. 6: At H.V.S.V. p.518 William Parry is made to report B. as saying that the American presidential system would be best for Greece. This may be Parry’s ghost-writer’s invention. 7: Don Juan III, The Isles of Greece, st.14. 8: An alternative motive is that, aware that he had a serious venereal infection (see Mellor, David. Was Byron’s Terminal Illness a form of Neuro-Syphilis? BJ 2006 (2), pp.127-32), he was anxious to spare Teresa.

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Kinnaird to realise all his investments at once – and for him to spend them all at once, and then die. Nostalgia for the homoerotic paradise he had experienced among the boys in the Capuchin convent in Athens is under the surface, but can be guessed from the poems he wrote to and about Loukas Chalandritsanos – as can the wretchedness which was his when it became clear that Loukas wasn’t interested: Tread those reviving passions down, Unworthy Manhood; – unto thee In different should the smile or frown Of Beauty be.9

Imagine my own amazement when, in 2011, in the Zambelli Papers in the B.L., I discovered the following unpublished letter from Byron to Lega Zambelli (really it’s a series of peremptory orders), dated February 2nd 1824: F.o 2. 1824 1. Il Thè non e bevanda Greca – dunque il Signor Luca può bever {dell} Caffè in vece – o aqua – o niente – 2. La paga del’ detto Luca sarà {di} cinque tallari per mese pagati come gli altri di casa. – Egli mangiarà cui Sulioti – o dove vuole. – – – 3. Il tenente di Drako può mangiare coi i miei di casa – altri no – senza almeno chio sé sà prima. – [swirl] [Tea is not a Greek drink; so Signor Luca can drink coffee instead – or water – or nothing. / The pay of the said Luca shall be five tallari per month, paid as with the other domestics. He will eat with the Suliotes – or wherever he wants. / The lieutenant of Drako may eat with the servants, but no-one else, unless I know in advance.] Note at page bottom, in Fletcher’s hand: “Directions to his {Lord Byrons} servants as to their eating and drinking whom he kept short as he did himself.”10 9: On this day I complete my thirty sixth year, st.8.

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February 2nd puts it soon after On This Day … which was written on January 22nd. Fletcher is being discreet: the note’s burden is that Loukas Chalandritsanos is no longer Byron’s intimate (insofar as he has ever been). In addition to loading Loukas with presents, Byron had him dressed magnificently, as he did others in his retinue; and this brings us to another dark motive for his return – the desire to hold court like a feudal chieftain: perhaps – see chapter on Scotland – like a Highland chieftain. His models were not, however, from Scott, but were more contemporary. In Ravenna his servants had dressed uniformly. He had since heard about Lady Hester Stanhope’s “court” in Palmyra, and envied her style. But of another court he had had first-hand experience, namely, that of the (now late) Ali Pacha. If I’m right (see the relevant chapter), he saw Ali as a substitute father, and what better way of honouring his memory than to replicate his Tepellene headquarters, in Missolonghi? Minus, of course, the broken bones and the nails driven through the forehead, and with a more convivial style. The real riddle is not “Why did he go to Greece in July 1823?” but “Why did he cross from Cefalonia to Missolonghi at the end of 1823?” Cefalonia was held by the English, and was safe. Missolonghi was neither, and Byron’s remit from the London Greek Committee was not to fight in the war, but to determine which factions in the war deserved the Greek loan. Doris Langley Moore puts it well: It has been assumed very often that Byron’s prudent attempts to assess the situation before moving to the mainland were a rationalization of his reluctance to leave a place he found agreeable. What good he could have done by going to the seat of war a few weeks earlier I do not know, and, venturing an opinion that many must have held but few or none expressed, I think it a thousand pities that he did not remain in Cephalonia altogether and let us into the secret of what happened between Don Juan and ‘her frolic Grace—Fitz-Fulke’. He could still have exercised considerable influence merely by providing and raising money and administering the loan: in fact, he might have prevented some of the disgraceful peculations which took place after his death both in England and in Greece itself; and we should have had several more cantos of our greatest comic epic.11

10: B.L.Add.Mss.46878 f.22; translated at LBAR pp.403-4; not in BLJ. See also Beaton, Byron’s War, p.243. The absence of this letter from BLJ is strange, given that LBAR, which has a translation but not the original Italian, was published by John Murray in 1974, and the relevant volume of BLJ – the eleventh – was published in 1981. 11: LBAR, p.390.

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His motive in crossing from the island to the mainland was the intention to die. He crossed to Missolonghi having been grossly flattered by Alexander Mavrocordatos, the one Greek leader he trusted (as he claimed) because the bespectacled Mavrocordatos seemed the most westernised of the competing chieftains. Mavrocordatos had written (my italics): It is true that circumstances are such as to enable us to accomplish much; but it is absolutely necessary that we should act in this way without losing time; for all the money which you have recently given in response to our solicitations will shortly be expended, if we keep the ships here for long without employing them immediately and in conjunction with operations on land on the plan of getting possession of Lepanto. M. Praïdes will place before you the details of this truth. We must play for time: every day gained, every hour, is a great advantage for us. Your presence will do the greatest good: our forces will be electrified; the enthusiasm of all will be kindled to follow the impulsion which you will give them. Do not let us lose this great opportunity, and you will have the pleasant satisfaction of having contributed to the work of our regeneration.12

One would not know that the writer was in flight from his enemies, the most important of whom, Colocotronis, had threatened to run him out of town on a donkey’s back.13 Byron may have known this, and to Hobhouse he is facetious: P.S. Mavrocordato’s letter says that my presence will “electrify the troops” so I am going over to “electrify” the Suliotes – as George Primrose went to Holland “to teach the Dutch English” “who were fond of it to distraction.”14

Mavrocordatos’ motives for being unctuous were self-evident. But Byron went anyway, and in just over four months was indeed dead. He had hoped to die in battle, and had gathered a troop about him who claimed to be Suliotes, that is, Albanians rendered stateless when the English had given their hometown of Parga to Ali Pacha.15 With these (not with Greeks) Byron planned to attack the fortress at Lepanto, along the 12: Alexander Mavrocordatos to B., late December 1823 (Ms. not found; provisional translation from Harold Nicolson, Byron’s Last Journey, 1934, pp.1767). 13: Beaton, op.cit., p.157. 14: B. to Hobhouse, December 27th 1823: text from NLS Ms.43440; BLJ XI 85. 15: See Cochran, The Sale of Parga and The Isles of Greece, Keats-Shelley Review 2000, pp.42-51.

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north coast of the Gulf of Corinth. Stanhope had assured him that its Albanian defenders hadn’t been paid for months, and would surrender after a token resistance. But it didn’t happen, as Byron told Samuel Barff: The account of the surrender of Lepanto would have been amusing had it been true .... but the Suliotes, instigated by Noti Botzari and Stornaris, had no mind to march against “stone walls” they said, and were impracticable besides from their private dissensions. They went towards Arta, but have hitherto done little that we hear of; but we expect better things by and bye.16

Byron’s optimism, in the final clause here, is desperate. His “Suliotes” turned out not to be Suliotes but miscellaneous riff-raff, after his money (some of them may have been agents of Colocotronis, sent to ruin the chances of Mavrocordatos).17 His dream of dying in battle was over. Byron’s mind and will may have stayed robust, but his flesh gave way. On February 15th 1824 (the day he dismissed the “Suliotes”) he had a kind of epileptic seizure: William Parry and Tita Falcieri, two very strong men, could hardly hold him down. He recovered sufficiently to conduct his business as usual, and to drill what troops he had. But he suffered from dizziness in the head and spasms in the chest, and a few days later he was seized with a second though slighter convulsion. These attacks may have hastened but they did not cause his death. Then, early in April, he went for a ride in the rain, against Fletcher’s advice, and caught a fever. The doctors applied sedatives, purgatives, an enema, and their most-favoured, universal remedy – leeches to his temples. It’s been calculated that by the time he died they’d removed between 36% and 43% of the blood from his body. The actual disease of which he died may have been Mediterranean tic fever – an illness he could have picked up from his only remaining friends, his dogs – or it may have been neuro-syphilis: but blood-loss and the acutest depression at the mess he had gotten himself into, in order to “do something or other—the times and fortune permitting—that, ‘like the cosmogony, or creation of the world, will puzzle the philosophers of all ages’”18 lowered his resistance and helped his disease along, whatever it was.

16: B. to Samuel Barff, March 26th-28th 1824 (Ms. not found; text from LJ VI 359-61; BLJ XI 141-3). 17: Nicolson, op.cit., p.220. 18: Compare King Lear: “I will do such things – what they are yet I know not, but they shall be the terrors of the earth”.

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He died on April 19th, his second attempt at transferring allegiance from one country to another having ended even more rapidly and bathetically than his first. Most of the world, Greece especially, has treated his self-delusive aspiration as heroic achievement.

FLETCHER ON MEDWIN First published NBSR, 2001

B.L. Add. Mss. 31038 is a miscellaneous Byronic folder, containing at the end (36r.-39v.) the first part – eight sides long – of a detailed critique of Thomas Medwin’s Conversations of Lord Byron (1824) by William Fletcher, Byron’s valet. The second part of this document, consisting of two sides only, is in the Morgan Library, New York. The material may be a transcription of a document now lost, though Ralph Lloyd-Jones, author of the DNB entry for Fletcher, thinks it may be in the hand of Fletcher himself, making a fair copy of a previous draft, and trying harder than usual for neatness. Ernest J. Lovell jr, in his edition of Medwin’s Conversations (Princeton 1966) refers only to the Morgan part of the document, which I reproduce with the permission of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Fletcher seems to have written his notes in spontaneous outrage. In an undated letter to Augusta, he writes: I was only Affraid of Loseing time – And I instantly Set To work the Same evening in marking out Passages which I Could Positively sware being false … But at the Same time any one must say why this must be onley a Mass of falsehoods Gleaned from one or a Nother, And No Conversation’s of my Lord’s, Which Mr. Murray says after this appears no one will ever believe a word of it. I think he has used Mr. Murray extreamely ill In Speaking of him in the way he did; for my Lord I have herd him many and many times Speak so very Kind of him in his Greatest Distress, which had not Escaped the Eyes of Mr. Murray while in Piccadilly, which Proved him to be a Reale friend in Need, which onley few Comes forward then. But my Lord Told me he Refused to Except any thing from him but Said he Should ever Remember it has the Kindest Thing he ever Experenced, And not more then a Month Before the Fatal Day My Lord was Speaking of him to me in the kindest way. Be Assured, Madam, I will Not Lose one Moment in Doing All that I Can do. In the First Place My Duty Calls for it being done, And In the Second Place my Will (or I had not

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Now been In London). Be Assured, Madam, My Lord’s Memory Shall Never be insulted while I Can Do him Justice. 1

Hobhouse uses at least thirteen of Fletcher’s points in the detailed demolition he tries to make of Medwin in his pamphlet Exposure of the Mis-Statements contained in Captain Medwin’s pretended “Conversations of Lord Byron” (London 1824). This is reprinted as part of a review of R.C.Dallas’s Recollections, and of Medwin’s Conversations, in the Westminster Review (III, January 1825, pp 1-35). In the notes, I have indicated which points Hobhouse borrows. In B.L. Add. Mss. 31038, care has been taken by the transcriber (if it is a transcription) to preserve Fletcher’s inaccurate orthography and minimalist punctuation. Spellings such as seperate for separate, herd for heard, his and has for is and as, and usages such as whom for who are retained. In my version I have only added [sic] and similar markers where I feel real doubt might arise in a reader’s mind. For clarity, I have added paragraphs, for which Fletcher felt no need in a letter, dividing them by obliques; but have not added capitals.

William Fletcher’s critique of Thomas Medwin’s Conversations of Lord Byron [36r:] I only speak to facts which I can prove on oath – Fletcher’s Remarks on Capt[ai]n Medwin as he calls himself – In page the first2 he begins with errors or indeed, I ought to say falsehoods in which he continues I am sorry to say to it’s last page – Medwin says his Lordships travelling equipage consisted of five [carriages] with nine horses a Monkey a Bull Dog and mastiff two Cats three pea Fowls with same Hens and seven Servants – in the first place my Lord never travelled with any thing except his Bull Dog which M[edwin]. represents as being an English one which was only from Venice where he was pupped [–] in the next place M[edwin]. represents there being —— five carriages when there was but four and nine Horses when there was no more than six with two Cats when there was but one and three Pea fowls with same hens when there was only two male and female which was all sent more than a week before my Lords departure [–] M[edwin]. seems to have been so much out in 1: Quoted R.E. Prothero, The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals (1901) VI 202n. 2: Medwin p.3.

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numbers which must —— at a moments reflections prove these to be no Conversations of my Lord – / / In page 43 M[edwin]. makes a remark which must be equally false in saying that I should say to his Lordship when in Greece while receiving one of the Bas reliefs of the Parthenon [“]what mantle pieces these would make my Lord[!”] now in the first place I never saw it in the presence of my Lord, but saw it several times while alone and admired it too much either to have it disfigured by making mantle pieces or any other pieces for I could only call them Robbers of the Country whom could dispoile the least [36v:] remains of Antiquity / / in the ninth page4 M[edwin]. says that I should say to my Lord that the Peacocks and Hens are almost has bad travellers as the Monkey [– ] now M[edwin]. must be as false in this as his other statements for I never travelled with either Monkey or Peafowls – / / Page 105 M[edwin] says that my Lord should tell him that he never was in Germany which my Lord could never tell him having travelled same country Hundred miles there6 – / / Page 127 M[edwin] in his conversations made a very great mistake in saying my Lord told him that he invited at Geneva a Professor and a friend of Gray’s an old gentleman8 [–] M[edwin] is so much wrong that it was Dr. Polidori whom invited the[m] – and my Lord was so much displeased that he stayed a way purposely and would not enter the House till they was gone – for I herd my Lord repeat his disapprobation at him taking such liberty to invite people to my Lord’s table without his Lordships knowledge and I can bring three witnesses to prove my assertions / / in Page 149 M[edwin] makes a very great mistake in his representations in saying – my Lord always had his Courier to carry eight or ten pair of Pistols which I can prove quite false for he never carried more than one pair in his holsters and that very seldom at some odd times my Lord would have one of the stable men to carrie two pair which was 3: Ibid p.6. 4: Ibid p.10. 5: Ibid pp.10-11. 6: In 1816, on his trip down the banks of the Rhine. 7: Lovell pp.12-13. 8: The Swiss professor was Pictet de Rougemont; the friend of Gray’s was Karl Victor von Bonstetten – Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 9: Lovell p.15.

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for Count Gamba and Trelawnig [sic] was in two cases but the Courier never carried more than the pair in his holsters / / in the same page10 M[edwin] has made another falsehood in saying my Lord should say he never had any thing to do with duels except twice as principle one was with Mr Hobhouse which I can prove to be false they always being on the most friendly terms / / in Page 2011 M[edwin] says my Lord should say that Guiccioli [37r:] who married Countess Teresa Gamba was sixty which he was not and says the Countess was only sixteen which I will prove to be more than twenty when married and that she always called him Sir and that they had seperate apartments now I can prove that they had not separate Apartments and that she always called him Alexandrie for I have herd her hundreds of times myself, / / in Page 2612 I must observe another error of M[edwin]. in respect to the Countess Guiccioli – whom he says my Lord was obliged to Smuggle out of Ravenna13 which so far from that she parted at 12 am at noon and was took by Post Horses which nothing could be more public than that14 and every thing was settled by the Papers orders so by those means there could be no smuggling in the affair / / M[edwin] mentions15 my Lord saying that he would join the revolutionist party which was very untrue for he said he would have nothing to do with their private meetings which he actually had not and as for M[edwin] wishing to make the public believe my Lord had a magazine in which was deposited one Hundred stand of Arms is equally untrue for my Lord, I can positively assert had no other arms16 than for himself and 10: Ibid p.15. 11: Ibid p.22. Hobhouse uses both Fletcher’s next two points in the Westminster Review. 12: Ibid p.24. 13: Ibid p.24. Teresa left Ravenna (and her husband) on July 25th 1821. Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 14: In fact they took advantage of the Count’s siesta. 15: Medwin p.26. 16: Both Medwin and Fletcher are, in their different ways, wrong. On February 16th 1821 B. writes in his Ravenna Journal: “Today I have had no communication with my Carbonari cronies; but, in the mean time, my lower apartments are full of their bayonets, fusils, cartridges, and what not. I suppose they consider me as a depôt, to be sacrificed, in case of accidents. It is no great matter, supposing that Italy could be liberated, who or what is sacrifced. It is a grand object - the very poetry of politics. Only think – a free Italy!” (BLJ VIII 47). Either Fletcher is lying, or he was unaware of the depth of B.’s involvement with the Carbonari.

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attendants for us to defend ourselves in case of a Banditto or straggling robbers which might beset us while travelling which my Lord said more than once he was determined to hold out to the last extremity in which I think we should all have followed his Lordsh=[ip’]s example – / / M[edwin] now goes to Ravenna17 where he mentions an affair18 which never could be my Lords conversations for he dont even know the house nor even [37v:] within four hours of the time M[edwin’]s informant must have been very much out both in time and circumstances – M[edwin] must have been very wrongly informed when they told him my Lord had his foot in his Stirrup at his Lordships usual hour of exercise when his Lordships horse started at the Gun and on my Lord looking up perceived a Man throw down a Carbine and run away at full speed, and a Nother stretched on the pavement a few yards from him [–] now this is quite different to the real occurrence which actually took place for my Lord’s time of taking exercise in Riding at the season of the year being latter end of November was never later than three or half past and the assassination of the unfortunate Commandant was at 8 am in the evening and in the latter end of November every one well knows it is neither time for my Lord to be riding out for his exercise or to see a man throw down a carbine [–] the fact was my Lord was going to pay a evening visit and walk19 being close by and Batista was waiting to attend my Lord which was his usual – custom and just at the time I remember well saying [“]I fear there is a Nother killed[”] and my Lord just coming out, at the time said the same thing for there had been several at that time been taken off in this way [–] my Lord instantly went down into the street and herd a confusion some small distance from him and instantly ran to the spot with tita at the same time wished me to stop in the house to take care of it for I wanted to have joined them and when they arrived which was instantly they found the unfortunate commandant whom [38r:] had fell by some person or Officer it was thought whom the Commandant had ill treated [–] they was consulting what should be done with him for no man dared to touch the dead man without a certain order 17: Medwin pp.26-7. 18: The assassination of Luigi dal Pinto, the military commandant of Ravenna, occurred on December 9th 1820, not in late November as Fletcher states. See Don Juan V, Stanzas 33-9, and BLJ VII 245-8. Hobhouse uses several of Fletcher’s points here in the Westminster Review. 19: With Teresa Guiccioli.

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under pain of imprisonment [–] my Lord without hesitation or fear of the consequences had him brought to his Lordships residence where he was placed on my bed and a Doctor sent for to see if any thing could be done for him, but he was gone [–] one of the men thought he saw him take his last breath while on my bed but I think he was gone before for he had seven slugs in different parts of his Body and one took nearly a finger off –/ / In page 3220 M[edwin] says my Lord told him that while residing in Venice and while Mr Moore was on a visit my Lord presented not to Mr Moore but to Mr Moore’s little Boy my Lordships Memoirs [–] now it happened rather unluckily for Mr M[edwin]. for Mr Moore had no little Boy with him nor I believe any at home at that time but with him I am positive for I was in the way of seeing him every day – therefore I can be positive – no[,] M[edwin] ought to remember that though my Lord is no more there is plenty whom can contradict a Statement of M[edwin’]s / / in page 3821 where he says after the Marriage ceremony had taken place that my Lord should say that he was very much displeased to find things so arranged so that his Lordship should find a Lady’s maid placed between them meaning my Lord and her Lady ship which was very incorrect22 and many more statements of her Lady ships [38v:] which is equally false – / / In page 4023 M[edwin] says my Lord in his conversations should say – we had a house in town gave dinner parties had separate carriages and launched into every sort of extrav=[agancie]s this he says could not last long [–] now M[edwin] as usual is in a very great error concerning dinner parties for I can positively assert they never gave one dinner party and in regard to other extravagancies I must say in justice to Lady Byron that no nobleman’s house could be conducted with more economy than her Ladyship conducted hers which she had the sole management of – / / and in Page 41 M[edwin] mentions Lady Byron beginning a letter with Dear Duck24 now every one knows Lady Byrons education to be so 20: Medwin p.30. See Ibid p.30 n68, where Medwin says he meant “for his little boy”. Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 21: Ibid p.36. Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 22: Annabella’s maid at the time of the separation was Fletcher’s third wife, Anne Rood. Fletcher’s kindness to Annabella here is remarkable in view of Annabella’s refusal to give Anne Rood any character references. 23: Medwin p.38. Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 24: Ibid p.38. Annabella did write the letter: “DEAREST DUCK, - / We got here quite well last night, and were ushered into the kitchen instead of drawing-room,

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very different and I even once herd my Lord mention this but not with those words when he received a unpleasant letter from her Ladyships Father and in Page 4225 every word is incorrect in regard to sending to the Post office to have a certain letter withdrawn – / / In page 4426 M[edwin] mentions as being my Lords conversations of his Lordships writing desk being broken open by Lady Byron and some letters of a married Ladys which he says M[edwin] I mean that Lady Byron read them now it can be proved that Lady Byron never broke any desk open / / now again in page 4527 M[edwin] says that his Lordship should say he was writing in a dark street in London [–] now it is well known to the public that Lord Byron was residing near Hyde Park corner in the Duchess of Devonshire’s House28 and consequently there could not be found a more lighter House [39r:] or Street – / / In Page 4729 M[edwin] has made a very great error in saying at Sir Ralph Noels when at Dinner my Lord should brake a tooth and that Lady Noel should say it will do you good. I am glad of it, now I can say it is not true for my Lord told me in the Month of March last that he never had the tooth ache nor even a tooth chipped,30 while at the same time asked me to

by a mistake that might have been agreable enough to hungry people. Of this and other incidents Dad wants to write you a jocose account, & both he & Mam long to have the family party completed. Such a W.C.! and such a sitting-room or sulkingroom all to yourself. If I were not always looking about for B[yron]. I should be a great deal better already for country air. Miss finds her provisions increased, & fattens thereon. It is a good thing she can’t understand all the flattery bestowed upon her, “Little angel”. Love to the good goose, and everybody’s love to you both from hence. Ever thy most loving. Pippin ... Pip----ip.” (Elwin, Lord Byron’s Wife, p 351). Compare the tidied-up version at Broughton, RLL II pp 202-3. Annabella subsequently described the letter to Lushington “as a measure ... dictated by humane & medical considerations”. 25: Medwin p.39. 26: Ibid p.42. 27: Ibid p.44. Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 28: The Duchess of Devonshire’s house was 13, Piccadilly Terrace. B. rented it from the 29th of March 1815 to the 23rd of April 1816, and seems never to have paid any rent. 29: Medwin p.46. 30: That is, March 1824. Only a month before B.’s death his teeth were, according to his valet, perfect.

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look in his mouth which I did and never saw a more perfect set of teeth without spot or blemish – / / Medwins informant in page 6531 made a very great — mistake it could not be his Lordship for Lord Byron was frequently invited to dinner at Miss Chaworths mother and they was on very good terms and I have Known Miss Chaworth ride round the Newstead estate and my Lord go round the Chaworth estate and instead of my Lords Mother residing there she never resided there till my Lord went abroad in 1809 [–] Lord Grey was the tenant at that time and my Lord was on a visit to him and was most days at Miss Chaworths Mothers so M[edwin] must be much out when he says My Lords meetings with Miss C[haworth]. were stolen ones. and the folly of talking of a Gate leading from Miss C[haworth’]s grounds to those of his Lordships mothers his folly to think of for a moment for they are more than two miles from Miss C[haworth’]s house and would any one ever believe had they not been on the most intimate terms that a Young Lady could go two miles or more to meet my Lord, or any man unknown to her Mother and such roads M[edwin’]s informant has been very [39v:] much out and does not know the situations of Ansley and Newstead estates so well has myself32 / / In page 6633 M[edwin] says my Lord had always a black riband round his neck to which was attached a locket containing hair and a picture and more things which were not and he says my Lord said in a hurry and great alarm [“]good God, I have lost my [––”] but before he had finished the sentence he had discovered the hidden treasure [–] now I feel sorry to tell him to his face that my Lord neither wore a Locket or picture with a black ribon – / / in page 7534 M[edwin] mentioned a Lady35 and several circumstances which I feel positive my Lord would not repeat for I herd a Gentleman once ask about the Lady in question and my Lord refused to mention and this was a very particular friend whom asked and how can a person whom to my Knowledge my Lord bid Tita whom we called by short so, but whose name was Batista whom my Lord bid more than once 31: Medwin p.61. 32: Fletcher, though not born on the Newstead estate, was a local man (he may have been born in Southwell) and would have known the area much better than either Medwin or his presumed “informant”. 33: Medwin p.61n. 34: Ibid p.70. 35: Lady Oxford.

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kick him down the Stairs if he would not go without for he would not he every moment broke in upon in the way he was for he has been told repeatedly [“]I will not see him and if he will not go by fair means he shall by foul[”] and once I recollect Medwin coming early in the morning and taking a book before my Lord was up my Lord missed the book and he was told no one had not been there [sic] but Medwin and my Lord was very angry at him being let in and said any [end of B.L. Ms.] [Morgan Ms. side 1:] one that dare to let him in he would never forgive him and even myself when Batista was not in the way was told by his Lordship either to send him off by fair if not by foul means for he would not see him which I have told you a hundred times – this will explain how much my Lord esteemed him as friend and said from the first he would not be bored to death with him for he saw there was no end with him for I see he will not be said no – and his Lordship said after those books [sic] being taken away by a person a Stranger was an insult past bearing and they was sent for accordingly with a very severe reprimand / / Medwin makes another tale up equally untrue in page 9836 where he says [when] my Lord was residing in Athens in the year 1810 my Lord was very much attached to a Turkish girl even so much so M[edwin] says that his Lordship had been of few women I remember the circumstances very well it happened to be Dervise37 one of his Lordships Guard and attendants whom Ali Pacha presented my Lord with an Albanian Turk38 – had it been a Christian he favourd no bribe could have saved her / / In page 10039 M[edwin] says at the time my Lord had his fever the most severest at Patrass [–] he says M[edwin] that my Lord told him I was left at Constantinople with a fever now – M[edwin’]s informant must have been very much out for I was left at Athens in the convent / / In page 102 and 10340 – M[edwin] says my Lord should say that [“]I should not have returned from Turkey If I had not been called home by my mother’s death[”] [Morgan Ms. side 2:] now – I can prove my Lord returned in the month of July and the death of my Lordship’s mother the Honble Mrs Byron did not take place till August 12th and she had not been ill more than sixteen or 36: Medwin p.86. 37: Dervish Tahiri, one of B.’s Albanian bodyguard. Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 38: Medwin (p.89) has “in Albanian Turkey”. 39: Lovell p.91. Hobhouse, Westminster Review. 40: Medwin p.91.

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seventeen days and my Lord was in London at the time and I was down at Newstead to make some little arrangements for his Lordship but before I could complete them I had to come to town with the distressing intelligence of her death which had she lived two days longer my Lord would have seen her – but she went off very suddenly at last and my Lord was very much hurt at not seeing her – / / In respect to Mr Murray what M[edwin] has said respecting him41 is very untrue for hundreds of times I have heard my Lord speak of him in the most kindest manner and said he was the most Gentlemanly person he had ever had anything to do with and frequently mentioned his kind offers in the moment of want which he repeatedly said he could never forget and not more than a week before I left Missolongi my Lord spoke highly of him and said he was sorry he had not let him publish all his works42

41: Ibid pp.166-76: “Mr John Murray is the most nervous of God’s booksellers”, and so on. 42: This last section seems to give the game away. Fletcher is writing his comments on Medwin to please Murray and Hobhouse, and is anxious to keep in with them. The sentence he was sorry he had not let him publish all his works is innocent flattery, for it was Murray’s shilly-shallying, not B.’s obduracy, which caused the relationship between poet and publisher to fail, at about the time Medwin was with B.

TWO AFTER-DINNER TALKS

BYRON AND BIRTHDAYS

Byron didn’t like birthdays: each birthday reminded him that he was a year older, and … … it was one of the deadliest and heaviest feelings of my life to feel that I was no longer a boy. From that moment I began to grow old in my own esteem; and in my esteem age is not estimable.1

We should therefore not be surprised when we understand that on his twenty-first birthday, when there was a huge party for him at Newstead Abbey, he dined alone in London, nor that he missed his twenty-fourth birthday party, also at Newstead, of which we have a fine description written for him by his beloved Susan Vaughan. But Byron was stranger still. He seems to have had a problem with all ceremonies and celebrations. He wanted to be buried with his dog. He didn’t attend his own mother’s funeral, saying that he was too upset – thus showing either that he missed the whole point of funerals, or that he wanted the grief and guilt he experienced at the thought of her death to stay alive within him. He ruined his fateful wedding service, by, as we should say, “corpsing” (he grinned at Hobhouse, his best man) at the line “… and with all my worldly goods I thee endow”: not surprisingly, since he didn’t have any worldly goods with which to endow his bride. The only event which he celebrated formally was the death of his mother-in-law in 1822, when he ordered his Pisan household into mourning, and that because of an event which he’d been waiting years for, and by which he was, in fact, delighted. There really is a sense in which not all of him attended his own funeral, since his lungs were left behind in Missolonghi (where they were lost); and Hobhouse and Augusta agreed that the corpse didn’t look anything like him: so who or what is buried in St Mary Magdalene, Hucknall?

A talk given after the Newstead Byron Society Annual dinner, January 2012. I am grateful to St Bernard of Clairvaux and W. Barrington Dalby for their comments. 1: Detached Thought 72.

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It wasn’t a good idea to have Byron as a participant in any ceremony. The only marriage where he stood himself as Best Man – that between the Earl of Portsmouth and John Hanson’s daughter – was a macabre disaster. At least three of the four children to whom he was godfather met unhappy ends. Byron Hobhouse, John Cam’s nephew, to whom both Byron and Hobhouse were godfathers at Rome in 1817, was killed on the retreat from Kabul in the winter of 1841-2. Byron stood godfather to Tom Moore’s daughter, Olivia Byron. Born August 18th 1814, she died on March 24th of the following year. And when the son of James and Frances Wedderburn Webster, to whom he was also godfather, died young, the father reports that Byron “almost chuckled with Joy—or Irony—& said ‘Well—I cautioned you—& told you that my name would almost damn any thing or creature’!!” Avoiding or disrupting ceremonies is a way of telling others that you aren’t one of them. In this indifference, or satirical hostility, to ceremony, whether domestic or sacramental, Byron resembles Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Hamlet attends his mother’s wedding – wearing black; he puts on a play, but then spoils it by his running commentary; at Ophelia’s funeral, he jumps into her grave and tries to kill the chief mourner; and, finally, a supposedly friendly fencing-match in which he takes part turns bloody, and he, his opponent, and the two principle spectators, are all killed. Hamlet’s attitude to ritual, like Byron’s, is subversive. Byron resembles Hamlet in another sense: whoever you are, you always get a Hamlet or a Byron which seems tailored for you. You define the Hamlet or the Byron who talks or writes to you. Both the fictional prince and the real-life poet craft their discourses to fit your idiom: Gertrude: Hamlet, thou hast thy father much offended. Hamlet: Mother, you have my father much offended. Gertrude: Come, come, you answer with an idle tongue. Hamlet: Go, go, you question with a wicked tongue.

Compare: Hamlet: Whose grave’s this, sirrah? Gravedigger: Mine, sir. Sings “O, a pit of clay for to be made / For such a guest is meet”. Hamlet: I think it be thine, indeed; for thou liest in’t. Gravedigger: You lie out on’t, sir, and therefore it is not yours: for my part, I do not lie in’t, and yet it is mine. Hamlet: Thou dost lie in’t, to be in’t and say it is thine: ‘tis for the dead, not for the quick; therefore thou liest.

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Byron and Birthdays Gravedigger: ’Tis a quick lie, sir; ‘twill away gain, from me to you.

The Gravedigger is the only character who sees Hamlet coming, and beats him at his own game. Whoever you are, Hamlet answers you, spontaneously, in your idiom, so that talking to him is like talking to yourself in a mirror: he isn’t there. We have few if any examples of Byron conversing with people; but here he is, writing to Annabella Milbanke … In her [Lady Melbourne’s] zeal in my behalfʊfriendly and pardonable as it wasʊshe in some degree exceeded my intentions, when she made the more direct proposal, which yet I do not regret, except in so far as it appeared presumptuous on my part. That this is the truth you will allow, when I tell you that it was not till lately that I mentioned to her that I thought she had unwittingly committed me a little too far in the expectation that so abrupt an overture would be received. But I stated this casually in conversation, and without the least feeling of irritation towards her or pique against yourself. Such was the result of my first and nearest approach to that altar, to which, in the state of your feelings, I should only have led another victim.2

… and here he is, writing to Douglas Kinnaird: As to “Don Juan” – confess – confess – you dog – and be candid – that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing – it may be bawdy – but is it not good English? – It may be profligate but is it not life, is it not the thing? – Could any man have written it – who has not lived in the world? – and tooled in a post=chaise? – in – a hackney coach? – in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? – in a vis a vis? – on a table? – and under it? – I have written about a hundred stanzas of a third Canto – but it is a damned modest – the outcry has frightened me. – I have such projects for the Don – but the Cant is so much stronger than Cunt – now a days: – that the benefit of experience in a man who had well weighed the worth of both monosyllables – must be lost to despairing posterity.3

2: B. to Annabella Milbanke, August 25th 1813: BLJ III 98-9. 3: B. to Douglas Kinnaird, October 26th 1819: (B.L.Add.Mss. 42093 ff.118-19; BLJ VI 231-3).

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Each correspondent gets the “Byron” which Byron finds appropriate for them. As with Hamlet, it doesn’t seem contrived, but natural – this is the way in which they deal with the world. “They” are somewhere else all the time. Neither man wants to be known. ————— Shakespeare rarely if ever dramatises a ritual without having it disrupted. The wedding in Much Ado, like the funeral in Hamlet, is seriously disrupted; the wedding in The Shrew is reported only, as having been a farce; and there are disrupted troth-plight ceremonies in As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest. Think of Macbeth’s coronation banquet! As for marriage – the closest and most intimate and perfectlyknit married couple he writes about are indeed the Macbeths. Then there’s Leontes and Hermione … Cymbeline and his wife … Antony and Octavia … Brutus and Portia … only Coriolanus and Virgilia seem relatively happy, if only because she hardly says anything. We must not expect Byron, with his particular attitude to marriage, to write poetry about weddings, and his married couples – Hassan and Leila, Azo and Parisina, Beppo and Laura, Alfonso and Julia, Gulbeyaz and the Sultan, Henry and Adeline – are not good advertisements for the wedded state. He does, however, write in detail about one funeral, and not just any old funeral either, but the state funeral of King George III: In the first year of Freedom’s second dawn Died George the third, although no tyrant, one Who shielded tyrants, till each Sense withdrawn Left him nor mental nor external Sun; A better farmer ne’er brushed dew from lawn, A weaker king ne’er left a realm undone; He died – but left his subjects still behind, One half as mad, and t’other no less blind. He died – his death made no great stir on earth; His burial made some pomp; there was profusion Of Velvet, gilding, brass, and no great dearth Of aught but tears – save those shed by collusion – For these things may be bought at their true worth; Of Elegy there was the due infusion, Bought also; and the torches, cloaks and banners, Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners,

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Byron and Birthdays Formed a sepulchral melodrame; of all The fools who flocked to swell or see the show, Who cared about the corpse? The funeral Made the attraction, and the black the woe; There throbbed not there a thought which pierced the pall, And when the gorgeous Coffin was laid low It seemed the mockery of hell to fold The rottenness of eighty years in gold. – So mix his body with the dust! It might Return to what it must far sooner, were The natural compound left alone to fight Its way back into earth, and fire, and air; But the unnatural balsams merely blight What Nature made him at his birth – as bare As the mere Millions’ base unmummied Clay – Yet all his Spices but prolong decay. – He’s dead – and upper Earth with him has done; He’s buried – save the Undertaker’s bill, Or Lapidary Scrawl, the world is gone For him – unless he left a German will – But where’s the proctor who will ask his Son? In whom his qualities are reigning still, Except that household virtue most uncommon, Of Constancy to an unhandsome woman. – – “God save the King!” It is a large economy In God to save the like, but if he will Be saving, all the better, for not one am I Of those, who think damnation better still – I hardly know too if not quite alone am I In this small hope of bettering future ill By circumscribing with some slight restriction The eternity of Hell’s hot jurisdiction. (The Vision of Judgement sts.8-13)

Perhaps we can deduce from this why Byron didn’t enjoy ceremonies, even his own birthday parties: for him, they only signified hypocrisy, and ostentation concealing rottenness. We may disagree, remembering some nice birthday-parties and dignified funerals we’ve attended ourselves; but we have to concede the power and boldness of his writing here (so bold, indeed, as to get his publisher prosecuted). What of the second question – the one about identity, or concealed identity, or invisible identity? Again, we go to The Vision of Judgement,

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when, to testify in favour of George III’s candidature for damnation, Sathan calls for the anonymous pamphleteer Junius, and we get … The Shadow came – a tall, thin, grey–haired figure, That looked as it had been a Shade on earth – Quick in its motions, with an air of vigour – But nought to mark its breeding or its birth – Now it waxed little – then again grew bigger – With now an air of gloom, or savage mirth – But as you gazed upon its features they Changed every instant – to what, none could say. The more intently the Ghosts gazed the less Could they distinguish whose the features were – The devil himself seemed puzzled even to guess – They varied like a dream – now here, now there – And several people swore from out the press They knew him perfectly, and one could swear – He was his father – upon which another Was sure he was his mother’s cousin’s brother, Another that he was a duke – or knight – An orator – a lawyer – or a priest – A Nabob – a Man Midwife; but the Wight Mysterious changed his countenance at least As oft as they their minds, though in full sight He stood, the puzzle only was increased – The Man was a phantasmagoria in Himself, he was so volatile and thin! The moment that you had pronounced him one, Presto! his face changed and he was another – And when that change was hardly well put on, It varied till I don’t think his own mother (If that he had a mother) would her son Have known, he shifted so from one to t’other, Till guessing from a pleasure grew a task, At this epistolary “Iron Mask”! For sometimes he like Cerberus would seem “Three gentlemen at once” (as sagely says Good Mrs. Malaprop) then you might deem That he was not even one – now many rays Were flashing round him – and now a thick steam Hid him from sight – like fogs on London days – Now Burke, now Tooke, he grew to people’s fancies –

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Byron and Birthdays And certes often like Sir Philip Francis. I’ve an hypothesis – ‘tis quite my own – I never let it out till now, for fear Of doing people harm about the throne – And injuring some minister or peer, On whom the stigma might perhaps be blown; It is – My gentle Public, Lend thine ear! ‘Tis that what Junius we are wont to call Was – really, truly – Nobody at all. (TVOJ sts.75-80)

Who Junius is depends not on who he is, but on what you, the individual spectator, are. God doesn’t make him – he doesn’t make himself – you make him according to your own conscious, semi-conscious, or unconscious predilection. He’s a blank slate, a tabula rasa, on which you carve your own identity. We’re reminded of a complaint Byron makes in Some Observations: I recollect to have read some time ago similar remarks upon Beppo (said to have been written by a celebrated northern preacher) in which the conclusion drawn was that “Childe Harold – Byron – and the Count in Beppo were one and the same person” – thereby making me turn out to be, as Mrs Malaprop says, “like Cerberus three Gentlemen at once.” That article was signed “Presbyter Anglicanus”, which I presume, being interpreted, means Scotch Presbyterian. I must here observe, and it is at once ludicrous and vexatious to be compelled so frequently to repeat the same thing, that my case as an author is peculiarly hard in being everlastingly taken or mistaken for my own protagonist. It is unjust and particular. I never heard that my friend Moore was set down for a fireworshipper on account of his Guebre – that Scott was identified with Roderick Dhu or with Balfour of Burleigh – or that notwithstanding all the magicians in Thalaba, anybody has ever taken Mr Southey for a conjuror. Whereas I have had some difficulty in extricating me even from Manfred – who, as Mr Southey slily observes in one of his articles in the Quarterly, “Met the devil on the Jungfrau – and bullied him …” (Some Observations upon an Article in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, August 1819)

He may protest too much, although it’s true that Childe Harold has nothing in common with the Count in Beppo. As with Junius, as with Hamlet, so with Byron. Obviously he did / does exist, but in two dimensions, private and public, dialogue and soliloquy – and there’s no connection between the two. In public, there are as many Juniuses, Hamlets, and Byrons, as there are people to observe and read about them. However, Hamlet often seems to be putting on an act

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even in soliloquy – performing for his own benefit: “Am I a coward? Who calls me villain … Oh, vengeance!” Who’s to say whether Byron, who often seems to be writing his diaries with an eye on posterity, ever “really, truly”, allows us into his own private thoughts, and lets us see his “real” self? His indifference to birthdays, weddings, funerals – even dinner parties (outside of Pisa, he never seems to have given any) may indicate that, secretly, he didn’t think that he, “really, truly”, existed at all. Like Banquo at Macbeth’s dinner-party, he was just a “horrible shadow” and an “unreal mockery”.

WHY THE ENGLISH HATE BYRON

The real title of my talk isn’t “Why do the English hate Byron?” or even “Why the English hate Byron” – it’s, “Why the English would hate Byron, if they read him, which they don’t.” For evidence that they hated him then, all we need to hear is this, by an academic writing in 1830: Byron ... is doomed to be exiled from the libraries of all virtuous men. It is a blessing to the world that what is putrid must soon pass away. The carcase hung up in chains will be gazed at for a short time in horror; but men will soon turn their eyes away, and remove even the gallows on which it is hung.1

Or listen to this obituary: On the awful and abrupt termination of the career of such a man, we are unable to express our feelings without the danger of guilty compromise on the one hand, and illiberal and offensive qualification on the other. The elements of Lord Byron’s literary character are too strongly marked for any middle course; no homage can be too ardent for his genius; no reprobation too strong for the uses to which it was too frequently applied. That he should have died so early, must be a source of regret to all – even to those who least valued his talents, and most detested his immoralities.2

For evidence that they still hate him, I’d remind you of the disgusting documentary Channel Four put out the year before last, featuring Rupert Everett’s buttocks, as he went for a V.D. jab, just (as he asserted) Byron did. I feel very bad about the programme, because I was briefly an adviser on it, though thank goodness I wasn’t credited. The film-makers’ aim was simply to embarrass, compromise and humiliate everyone in it, and to set The gist of a talk given after the Newstead Byron Society Annual Dinner, January 21st 2013. 1: Rev. John Todd in his 1830 book The Students’ Guide Quoted in Chambers (1925: 19). Todd, writing as “Oxoniensis”, had in 1822 published a pamphlet against B.’s Cain: “A Remonstrance Addressed to Mr. John Murray, Respecting a Recent Publication.” 2: Obituary in The Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, Friday May 21st 1824: my thanks to Jill Kimber for bringing this document to the dinner.

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Byron up as a subject for people to giggle about. I wanted to put a still of Rupert Everett’s buttocks from it into the Newstead Review, but wasn’t allowed to. The other day I saw a picture of Byron on the BBC News website, and clicked on it eagerly – but the issue was, “Was Lord Byron was the first Celebrity Dieter?” That he was a great poet with a huge international reputation was neither here nor there – the BBC had to bring him down to the imbecile level of our own culture, in which Celebrity Dieters are infinitely more marketable than poets. This morning I checked out the Cambridge University English Faculty lecture lists for this year: sure enough, no Byron – his own university doesn’t teach him. One of my favourite games, on the rare occasions when I meet a member of the Cambridge English Faculty, is to ask “Does anybody teach Byron here?” the standard reply being “Yes, of course they do!” followed by a brief, self-conscious pause, followed by them changing the subject. And a couple of years ago I was having lunch with an attractive young lady in Oxford, where she was doing an M.Phil on Byron. We were within fifty yards of the Bodleian Library. “Byron?” I chirruped. “I expect that means you’ll be looking at the Lovelace Papers!” Guess what her response was – “What are the Lovelace Papers?” The main reason why the English hate Byron is that they hate all poetry (I speak of the English, not the Scots, the Welsh, or the Irish). [Colonel Blimp voice]: “Ah, yes – poetry – yes, we did it at school – nightingales, skylarks, that sort of thing – ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ – marvellous stuff – sort of thing yer read on a Sunday afternoon after a walk in the country …”3 But Byron doesn’t write poetry for Sunday afternoon walks. He writes poetry for first thing Monday mornings. He writes poetry about indigestion [Don Juan VII 36] – two of his minor characters [Nadir Shah and Potemkin] die of indigestion. He writes poetry about constipation [Don Juan IX 33] and [I didn’t use these next two: menstrual flow [Don Juan VI 2] and the relative duration of the male and female orgasms [Don Juan VI 1-2]]: not at all material for a Sunday afternoon stroll in the country. 3: “Marvellous” was Elma Dangerfield’s favourite adjective. She used to tell me it was “marvellous” what I was doing, even though she didn’t seem to know or care what it was that I was doing. She once – it was here, at Nottingham – introduced me by saying, [Elma voice:] “And now we have Dr Peter Cochran … it says here he’s editor of the Newstead Abbey Byron Society Review … can’t say I’ve ever heard of it …”

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Byron writes poetry about sex … and politics … to the English palate, these are not poetic subjects. Poetry must have nothing to do with real life. The next reason why they hate him is because of an obscure suspicion they harbour (without having read him, of course) that he hated them. Here he is, addressing them, via his hapless publisher, John Murray: I have not written for their pleasure; – if they are pleased – it is that they chose to be so, – I have never flattered their opinions – nor their pride – nor will I. – Neither will I make “Ladies books” “al dilettar le femine e la plebe”4 – I have written from the fullness of my mind, from passion – from impulse – from many motives – but not for their “sweet voices.”5 – – I know the precise worth of popular applause – for few Scribblers have had more of it – and if I chose to swerve into their paths – I could retain it or resume it – or increase it – but I neither love ye – nor fear ye – and though I buy with ye – and sell with ye – and talk with ye – I will neither eat with ye – drink with ye – nor pray with ye.6 – – – – – They made me without my search a species of popular Idol – – they – without reason or judgement beyond the caprice of their Good pleasure – threw down the Image from it’s pedestal – it was not broken with the fall – and they would it seems again replace it – but they shall not. – – – – – ––7

Why did he hate them, is the question. I’ll tell you a story. In the mideighties some Russian academics got together a fine new edition of Byron, and took it to a leading Moscow publisher. (Russian accent): “No!” was the response. “But why not? He’s Byron! The rebel! The superfluous man! The inspirer of Pushkin and Lermontov!” (Russian accent): “No!” “But why not?” (Russian accent): “He was disloyal to his country!” “But it was the country of Castlereagh! Of Liverpool! Of Wordsworth and Southey! Of George IV! It was canting, materialist, bourgeois / capitalist / imperialist England!” (Russian accent): “It does not matter. We cannot publish the work of anyone who was disloyal to his country!” What did Byron find so unacceptable about England (again, I speak of England, not of Britain)? Listen to this: The truth is that in these days the grand “primum mobile” of England is Cant – Cant political – Cant poetical – Cant religious – Cant moral – but 4: “to please the women and the common people”. 5: Shakespeare, Coriolanus, II iii 109. 6: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, I iii 31-4. 7: B. to Mu., April 6th 1819 (b); text from NLS Ms.434890; BLJ VI 105-6.

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always Cant – multiplied through all the varieties of life. It is the fashion, and while it lasts will be too powerful for those who can only exist by taking the tone of the time. I say Cant, because it is a thing of words, without the smallest influence upon human actions – the English being no wiser, no better, and much poorer, and more divided amongst themselves – as well as far less moral – than they were before the prevalence of this verbal decorum.8

“Cant” is empty rhetoric, hot air, pompous, aggressive language designed to compensate for your insecurity about your power-base. That passage is in prose. Listen to what he says about the English in his poetry: Cockneys of London! Muscadins of Paris! Just ponder what a pious pastime war is: Think how the Joys of reading a Gazette Are purchased with all agonies and crimes: Or if these do not move you, don’t forget Such doom may be your own in after times. Meantime the taxes, Castlereagh, and Debt, Are hints as good as Sermons, or as rhymes; Read your own hearts and Ireland’s present Story, Then feed her famine fat with Wellesley’s Glory! Yet still there is unto a patriot Nation, Which loves so well its Country and its king, A Subject of sublimest exultation – Bear it, ye Muses, on your brightest wing! Howe’er the mighty Locust, Desolation, Strip your green fields, and to your harvests cling, Gaunt Famine never shall approach the throne – Though Ireland starve, great George weighs twenty stone. (Don Juan VIII sts.124-6)

He speculates as to what the reactions of future paleontologists will be, when they discover King George IV’s gigantic fossil: Think if then George the fourth should be dug up! How the new Worldings of the then new East Will wonder where such Animals could sup (For they themselves will be but of the least – Even Worlds miscarry when too oft they pup, 8 A Letter to **** ****** (John Murray Esqr) on the Rev. W. L. Bowles’ Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope.

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Why the English Hate Byron And every new Creation hath decreased In size, from overworking the Material – Men are but Maggots of some huge Earth’s burial); How will to these young People, just thrust out From some fresh Paradise, and set to plough, And dig, and sweat, and turn themselves about – And plant, and reap, and spin, and grind, and sow, Till all the Arts at length are brought about – Especially of War and Taxing – how – I say – will these great relics – when they see ‘em – Look like the Monsters of a new Museum? – – (Don Juan XI, sts.39-40)

He describes London as a Hell (“the Devil’s drawing room”: X, 81, 3). He juxtaposes Juan’s 1790s perspective on the Prince Regent (“A finished Gentleman from top to toe”: XII, 64, 8), with the man’s current inflated image, just quoted. And, in the Norman Abbey cantos, he sums up the emptiness of the lives of the elite: “Society is now one polished horde / Formed of two mighty tribes, the Bores and Bored” (XIII, 95, 7-8). In Canto XI, he does a retrospective: I’ve seen small poets, and great prosers, and Interminable – not eternal – speakers – I’ve seen the Funds at war with house and land – I’ve seen the Country Gentlemen turn squeakers – I’ve seen the people ridden o’er like sand By slaves on horseback – I have seen malt liquors Exchanged for “thin potations” by John Bull – I’ve seen John half detect himself a fool. – (Don Juan XI, st.85)

But the main focus of his distaste was the English attitude to their victory at the Battle of Waterloo. For the English, Waterloo was a sign of God’s grace – a victory for Good – a victory for John Bull, for Divine Justice, for Legitimacy – for who had we conquered at Waterloo but the Great Satan – the AntiChrist himself – Napoleon Bonaparte! Along, it has to be said, with many others (the brewer Samuel Whitbread cut his throat after Waterloo), Byron was of the opposite opinion. For him, Napoleon was Prometheus, and Waterloo had extinguished the fire he had brought to mankind from heaven. The battle had unseated the liberator, and put the Tsar of Russia, The Kings of France and Prussia, and the Emperor of Austria, back on their tyrannous thrones. Listen to him addressing the Duke of Wellington in Don Juan:

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Oh, Wellington! (or “Villainton” – for Fame Sounds the heroic syllables both ways; France could not even conquer your great name, But punned it down to this facetious phrase – Beating or beaten she will laugh the same) You have obtained great pensions and much praise; Glory like yours should any dare gainsay, Humanity would rise, and thunder “Nay!” Though Britain owes (and pays you too) so much, Yet Europe doubtless owes you greatly more; You have repaired Legitimacy’s Crutch – A prop not quite so certain as before; The Spanish – and the French, as well as Dutch, Have seen and felt how strongly you restore – And Waterloo has made the World your debtor, (I wish your bards would sing it rather better.) You are “the Best of Cut-throats” – do not start – The phrase is Shakespeare’s, and not missapplied; War’s a brain-spattering, windpipe-slitting Art, Unless her Cause by Right be sanctified; If you have acted once a generous part, The World, not the World’s Masters, will decide; And I shall be delighted to learn Who, Save you and yours, have gained by Waterloo? I am no flatterer – you’ve supped full of flattery; They say you like it, too – ‘tis no great wonder; He whose whole life has been Assault and Battery At last may get a little tired of thunder, And, swallowing eulogy much more than Satire, he May like being praised for every lucky blunder; Called “Saviour of the Nations” – not yet saved – And Europe’s Liberator – still enslaved. I’ve done – now go and dine from off the plate Presented by the Prince of the Brazils, And send the Sentinel before your gate A Slice or two from your luxurious meals; He fought – but has not fed so well of late; Some hunger, too, they say the people feels; There is no doubt that you deserve your ration – But pray give back a little to the nation. – I don’t mean to reflect – a man so great as

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Why the English Hate Byron You, my Lord Duke! is far above reflection; The high Roman fashion, too, of Cincinnatus, With modern history has but small connection; Though as an Irishman you love potatoes, You need not take them under your direction – And half a Million for your Sabine farm Is rather dear! – I’m sure I mean no harm. Great men have always scorned great recompenses – Epaminondas saved his Thebes and died, Not leaving even his funeral expenses; George Washington had thanks and nought beside, Except the all cloudless Glory (which few men’s is) To free his Country; Pitt too had his pride, And as a high-souled Minister of State, is Renowned for ruining Great Britain gratis. – Never had mortal Man such opportunity, Except Napoleon, or abused it more– You might have freed fall’n Europe from the Unity Of Tyrants, and been blest from shore to shore; And now – what is your fame? shall the Muse tune it ye? Now – that the rabble’s first vain shouts are o’er? Go! hear it in your famished Country’s cries! Behold the World! and curse your Victories! As these new Cantos touch on warlike feats, To you the unflattering Muse deigns to inscribe Truths that you will not read in the Gazettes, But which ‘tis time to teach the hireling tribe Who fatten on their Country’s gore and debts Must be recited – and without a bribe; You did great things – but not being great in mind Have left undone the greatest – and mankind. (Don Juan IX sts.1, 3-10)

What would Byron feel about modern England? Where would he have found modern English canting? Would he have found it in political correctness? What would he have made of the United States, which he regarded as an exciting new, young republic, the beacon of freedom, the hope for the future of the world? What would he, who tried (vaguely) to bring freedom to Greece, have made of America’s vain attempts to do the same in Iraq and Afghanistan? [Didn’t use this bit:] What would he have written about the problems of modern Greece? He wouldn’t have been surprised by them:

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Whoever goes into Greece at present should do it as Mrs Fry went into Newgate – not in the expectation of meeting with any especial indication of existing probity – but in the hope that time and better treatment will reclaim the present burglarious9 and larcenous tendencies which have followed this General Gaol delivery. – When the limbs of the Greeks are a little less stiff from the shackles of four centuries – they will not march so much “as if they had gyves on their legs”.10 – – At present the Chains are broken indeed; but the links are still clanking – and the Saturnalia is still too recent to have converted the Slave into a sober Citizen. – The worst of them is that (to use a coarse but the only expression that will not fall short of the truth) they are such d–––d liars; – there never was such an incapacity for veracity shown since Eve lied11 in Paradise.12

You can see the English distaste for Byron all the way through nineteenth-century literature. Major poets like Tennyson may admire him, but none imitate him. And if he’s seen at all, he’s only pictured in novels as a wicked lecher; Steerforth, the seducer of little Emily in David Copperfield, or George Staunton, the seducer of Effie Deans in The Heart of Midlothian. It’s true that he has a splendid avatar in Mr Rochester (I find very little of him in Heathcliff); but even Mr Rochester, you see, has to be blinded and mutilated before Jane can marry him. Even the Brontës misread him, in depicting him as a male chauvinist. As he wrote, ‘“Convent” – and “carry off” quotha! – and “girl” – – I should like to know who has been carried off except poor dear me – I have been more ravished myself than anybody since the Trojan war – –’13

It wasn’t until the twentieth century, with W.B.Yeats, T.S.Eliot, and James Joyce (and of the three, only Joyce was whole-hearted about it), that the influence of Byron as a literary as opposed to a mythological / sexual force was experienced. 9: For B.’s use of the adverb that goes with this adjective, see Don Juan I, 219, 6. 10: Henry IV I, IV ii 40 app.: … the villains march wide betwixt their legs, as if they had gyves on. The quotation makes B. into Falstaff, and the Greeks his followers, of whom the jail has just been emptied. 11: Could be “liv’d”. 12: Cephalonia Journal (concluded at Missolonghi); text from NLS Acc.12604 / 04061; BLJ XI 32-3). The passage is unfair to Eve, who was seduced and misguided, not mendacious. 13: B. to Ho., October 29th 1819; text from NLS Ms.43448; BLJ VI 237.

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————— We now come to the real reason why the isolated, insular, philistine English hated, and still hate, Byron – it’s because the continent of Europe worshipped him, and if those weird krauts, frogs, russkies, eyties and dagoes worshipped him, he was suspect. He couldn’t be one of us. We must be right to hate him and dismiss him. No no. Nightingales and skylarks. Sunday afternoons. “I wandered lonely as a cloud”. Byron and Walter Scott are the only two British writers whose influence on the continent was instant – Shakespeare, by contrast, took two hundred years to make his presence felt. No sooner was a new Byron poem published from 50 Albemarle Street than it was whisked across the Channel, translated (into French prose), and within six months was being read from the Atlantic to the Urals, and beyond. We start at the top. Alexander Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, is the finest critic Byron ever had – because, rather than write fake critical accounts of him (see this year’s Newstead Review), Pushkin incorporated his critical insights about Byron into his own creative work – changed his style as he perceived Byron’s style changed – saw that Byron was being satirical about his own work, and was satirical correspondingly. All of Pushkin’s longer poems between 1819 and 1829 can be seen as a series of witty and creative responses to Byron’s longer poems: in Evgeny Onegin, he writes a poem about a man who thinks he’s Childe Harold – but writes it in a style comparable to that of Don Juan. Pechorin, the protagonist of Mikhail Lermontov’s A Hero of our Time, is modelled on Byron (or Byron’s gloomier heroes). Lermontov wrote, ɇɟɬ, ɹ ɧɟ Ȼɚɣɪɨɧ, ɹ ɞɪɭɝɨɣ. ȿɳɟ ɧɟɜɟɞɨɦɵɣ ɢɡɛɪɚɧɧɢɤ, Ʉɚɤ ɨɧ ɝɨɧɢɦɵɣ ɦɢɪɨɦ ɫɬɪɚɧɧɢɤ, ɇɨ ɬɨɥɶɤɨ ɫ ɪɭɫɫɤɨɸ ɞɭɲɨɣ. ə ɪɚɧɶɲɟ ɧɚɱɚɥ, ɤɨɧɱɭ ɪɚɧɟ … [“No, I am not Byron, but another, / A chosen being still unknown, / Like him an outcast from society / Except that I have a Russian soul, / I started earlier, and earlier will finish …”]14

Lermontov wrote a translation of Byron’s Darkness which is so good it’s read as an original Russian poem.

14: tr. Tatiana Wolff: Russian text at ɇȺɍɄ Lermontov (1962) I 361.

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Both Pushkin and Lermontov were killed in duels. Early nineteenthcentury Europe is strewn with the corpses of men who admired and imitated Byron. As the century progressed, it became clear that Byron’s poetry was one thing, but that “Byronism” was another. “Byronism” was a mood, a philosophy, a pose, a statement of alienation and despair, derived from a partial reading of his poetry and a complete misreading of his life. Dostoievsky, fellow-countryman of Pushkin and Lermontov, was very impressed by “Byronism”. So far as I can tell, he read only The Prisoner of Chillon (in translation): but you didn’t have to have read any Byron to understand “Byronism” or to be a “Byronist”. “Byronism” for Dostoievsky was a Dark Night of the Soul through which Europe had to live, between the despair brought about by the failure of the French Revolution … and the dawn of the New Hope, represented by – said Dostoievsky – the Truth of the Russian People. His novels are full of damned “Byronic” characters such as Stavrogin in Devils or Svidrigailov in Crime and Punishment, who drag their sinful load about, always anxious to cast it off and amend their lives, but unable to do so, and destroying all around them instead. Now I think of it, isn’t Prince Andrei in War and Peace a bit of a Byronic figure? And what’s the last thing Vronsky says in Anna Karenina? “As a man, I’m a failure – as a soldier, I may still be of some value” – and what’s he going off to do? Fight the Turks!!! In France, things were a bit jollier. Stendhal (who’d actually met Byron) uses epigraphs from Don Juan constantly, and Julien Sorel in Le Rouge et le Noir is a version of Juan. Alphonse de Lamartine modelled himself on Byron, and though it didn’t affect his poetry, he did get briefly into bed with Teresa Guiccioli. Alfred de Musset was known as “Mademoiselle Byronnet”, and actually went to Venice in order to find Marianna Segati, and get into bed with her. He failed – but his girlfriend, George Sand (Chateaubriand called her “le Lord Byron de France”) went to bed with his doctor in the next room. It was Lamartine who addressed these famous words to Byron: Toi, dont le monde encore ignore le vrai nom, Esprit mystérieux, mortel, ange ou démon, Qui que tu sois, Byron, bon ou fatal génie, J’aime de tes concerts la sauvage harmonie Comme j’aime le bruit de la foudre et des vents Se mêlant dans l’orage à la voix des torrents!

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The Germans took Byron very seriously. Had not the great Goethe, on reading Cain, said, “Byron alone I admit to a place at my side”.15 He too had addressed a poem to Byron (a bit of a condescending poem next to Lamartine’s), and had portrayed Byron in Faust Part II, as Euphorion, offspring of Faust and Helen of Troy, who tries to fly, like Icarus, but vanishes in a cloud of stars. The Germans despised the English for their undervalution of Byron, and were disappointed not to be able to find any German ancestors for him. Heinrich Heine was a German admirer of Byron much more wholehearted than Goethe. (I’m sure you all know one poem of Heine’s [sings]: Ɖ“Ich weiss nicht was soll es bedeuten / Dass ich so traurig bin”Ɖ). On May 27th 1824, in a letter to Rudolf Christiani, he wrote, Während ich dieses schreibe erfahre ich daß mein Vetter, Lord Byron, zu Missolungi gestorben ist. So hat dieses große Herz aufgehört zu schlagen! Es war groß und ein Herz, kein kleines Eyerstöckchen von Gefühlen. Ja dieser Mann war groß, er hat im Schmerze neue Welten entdeckt, er hat den miserabelen Menschen und ihren noch miserableren Göttern prometheisch getrozt, der Ruhm seines Namens drang bis zu den Eisbergen Thules und bis in die brennenden Sandwüsten des Morgenlandes. take him al in al, he was a man. Wir werden sobald nicht mehr seines Gleichen sehen. [“Since I started this I have heard that my cousin, Lord Byron, has died at Missolonghi. So that great heart has stopped beating! His was a mighty and singular heart – no tiny little ovary of emotions. Yes, he was a great man – from his pain he created new worlds, Prometheus-like he defied miserable man and his still more miserable gods, the glory of his name echoed from the icebergs of Thule to the burning, sandy deserts of the East. ‘He was a man, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again.’]16

To show just how close a cousin to Byron Heine was: in 1844 Heine published a poem called Deutschland ein Wintermärchen – Germany, a Winter Journey. In it, he travels from Paris to Hamburg, to meet his publisher. After the meeting he goes on the town, and meets a lady of the night, who tells him she’s Hammonia, the Goddess of Hamburg. One thing leads to another, and afterwards, he notices a strange smell emanating from behind a curtain in an alcove in the corner of her room. If you put your nose down the receptacle behind there, she says, you’ll smell the 15: Quoted Trueblood p.62. 16: Werke 20 163 / Briefe, ed. F.H.Eisner.

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Future of Germany (Germany wasn’t of course one nation yet). Heine tries it, and describes a vile pong, of rotten cabbages, dirty leather, and much else … Heine was Jewish, and his poems were banned in Prussia. Now here’s the point. When the Nazis entered Paris in 1940, they went, on the Führer’s personal instructions, straight to the cemetery where Heine was buried, dug up his grave, and destroyed his remains. Say what you like about the Nazis – and they were a thoroughly reprehensible set of fellows in every way – but do you see the contrast? They took poetry seriously! I don’t think anyone’s ever demanded that Byron’s remains be destroyed – after all, he’s only, as the lady said to Rupert Everett in the Hucknall Byron Bingo Hall, “a bit of a lad, who wrote poetry”. No-one could feel threatened by that description. Nobody reads poetry. ————— Byron’s influence is everywhere in the nineteenth century. In Venice there are two statues, of identical size, placed on a bend, and with trees planted between them so they can’t “see” one another. Anyone know who they are? [Silence] They’re Verdi and Wagner. Whoever did the statues thought they were equally great, but that they had nothing in common. But they do have something in common – they were both influenced by Byron! Two of Verdi’s operas, Il Corsaro and I Due Foscari, are based on works by Byron. And Wagner became fascinated by Byron when in his youth he read a translation of Manfred by his uncle Adolph [Leipzig, parallel text, 1819]. He put a Manfred-like figure, not just in any old opera, but in the middle of the thirteen-and-a-half hours of Der Ring Des Niebelungen. He called him Wotan. What, after all, does Manfred long for? [Gloomy voice:] “Oblivion!” and what does Wotan long for [Sings: Ɖ“Das Ende! Das Ende!”Ɖ]. For more thoughts, see my essay in last year’s Review. ————— It’s never-ending. It’s impossible to think of two philosophers more different than Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. But both admired Byron. Schopenhauer’s big work, The World as Will and Representation, is full of

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Byron quotations; and Nietzsche actually said that Also Sprach Zarathustra was “his Manfred”. ————— For the English, none of this is worth anything, all of it is suspect, and only confirms their instinctive distaste. No-one of whom the Europeans think so highly can possibly be of interest in England. ————— Byron is a joker. He aims at giving offence. The following lines were once quoted by a distinguished Byronist on TV, as proof of his intention to enlighten the world: But Words are things, and a small drop of Ink, Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps Millions, think …

But consider what he follows it with. As you may know, he called Wordsworth “Turdsworth”. He elaborates the thought in the way he elaborates the idea of George IV being dug up, which I quoted: “What,” he asks, “will become of the paper on which I’m writing this? What sort of things are words, really?” His answer pulls no punches: … ‘Tis strange, the shortest letter which Man uses Instead of Speech, may form a lasting link Of Ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail Man, when paper – even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that’s his. – And when his bones are dust, his Grave a blank, His Station, Generation, even his Nation, Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank In Chronological commemoration, Some dull M.S. oblivion long has sank, Or Graven Stone found in a barrack’s station In digging the foundations of a Closet, May turn his name up, as a rare deposit. (Don Juan III sts.88-9)

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The precious manuscript may well end up mingling with the pooh in a new soldiers’ W.C. – words and turds, turds and words. No nightingales or skylarks for him. You don’t go to Byron’s poetry for reassurance. ONCE, when midnight smote the air, Eunuchs ran through Hell and met On every crowded street to stare Upon great Juan riding by: Even like these to rail and sweat Staring upon his sinewy thigh.

To conclude. Last year I gave a talk to one of the better-known Byron societies. I won’t tell you which one it was. But after, a lady came up who’d been one of the society’s founder members, and said, [Irish accent:] “Dr Cochran – you’ve made me determined to do one thing – you’ve made me determined to go and read some Byron!” If this talk has made you determined to go and read some Byron, it will have succeeded. Thank you.

COMICAL PIECES FROM THE NEWSTEAD REVIEW

THE DEVIL & NEWSTEAD ABBEY RUFUS T. FIREFLY First published NBSR, 2000

The Angels all were singing out of tune ... Lord Byron’d been in Hell for some Decades, And sad to say, ’twas turning rather dull; Not that he grumbled at the Whiggish Shades He roamed with; no, the Place was brimming-full With Fun and Prodigality; Old Blades Like Fox – Bankes – Sheridan – oh, such a Cull Of Comrades ne’er had laughed on poor old Earth; Of Politics, as well, there was no dearth, For Sathan, unlike God, discouraged flattery; While sycophants like Pitt and Liverpool Had naught to do but make Assault and Battery Upon God’s wax-rimed Ears with tuneless drool, The Devil loved a Row – Why,’twas no Matter; He Just felt that Man who knelt to be a Fool, And countered Heaven’s cacophony of Moan With weird Key-Changes of His very own. About the Throne on High crouched Annabella, And Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Walter Scott; They’d never sung on Earth, and while in Hell a Person’s grating Tone ne’er formed a Blot To stain his Reputation, a poor Dweller In the white fleecy Clouds felt quite a Sot At Æons of loud Wailing, flat and mouthey – Unless, of course, his Name was Robert Southey. This caused the Damned to feel much less distressed: Though Sathan could be quite a noisome Fellow, Their suffering Ears were given a sterner Test

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By listening to the distant, horrid Bellow Of those deemed “Good enough” to be God’s “Blessed”; It turned Mozart’s Cherubic face quite yellow; The folks Upside (save Southey, from Helvellin) All knew – now – which Dark Place they’d rather dwell in, For Sathan spawned gay Gewgaws Electronic, Disguising Sin and Filth as Fun and Frisk; To make Poor Folk more Hellishly Moronic, And thus his Tempting Trade on Earth more brisk, He tested on the Damned-and-Catatonic DVD, Video and LazerDisc, Chimeras, DJs, Banshees, and Softcore – As in young Branson’s Virgin Megastore. Byron’s own Weakness here was sad and meagre – His Life On Film, in Parallel and Proxy: He lusted hopelessly for the svelte and eager Dames cast there to play Doll, Dish and Doxy – Natasha Richardson and Alice Krige Made all his chaste Venetian Maids seem Poxy – And looked much cooler, firm of Breast, softer of Belly, Than real, sad, sagging, shapeless Mary Shelley. * But, ’spite his Sport with Hell’s Hot Population, The Shows, the Parties, male and female Mates (For Sathan don’t discourage Copulation – There’s nothing God the Fatherly more hates, And Rogering’s a major Stipulation For anyone who enters Hell’s wide Gates) Byron declaimed, “I don’t want to sound crabby – “But, Folks, I miss ... my grand old Newstead Abbey!” “It was the Pile Great-Uncle left to me – “ ’Twas there my Mamma snuffed it, and I played “At Monks and Spooks with Carnal Companye – “My little Stretch of England – I betrayed “It – ’twas my Home – my Womb – my Agony; “I sold it – Ninety Grand was what he paid – “The Guilt seeped through me till my Soul turned black; “And now – I want my Blameless Birthright back!”

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“It stands embosomed in a happy valley, “Crowned by high Woodlands, where the Druid Oak “Stands like Caractacus in act to rally “His host, with broad Arms ’gainst the Thunder-Stroke; “And from beneath his Boughs are seen to sally “The dappled Foresters, all set to croak “As Folk (not I, of course) aim well-oiled Guns – “It’s built for Bliss, and Old Arcadian Puns!” ** Dread Sathan listened thoughtfully. He’d admired Don Juan, Beppo, and that splendid Judgement, Which painted Him Heroick as Desired; In Byron’s Poems he had found a Lodgement More true than any God-Dad had acquired; Damned Folks, though, couldn’t trade in legal Parchment; But he’d a Plan as cunning as ’twas Queer – Instead of that, Newstead would slide down here. * Ms Richardson plays Mary Shelley in Gothic: Ms Krige, in Haunted Summer. ** The Byronic voice here heard is not that heard in the Letters and Journals. It is based on the voice of Mr Toad: “Alas! Toad Hall, that desirable riverside residence, in the hands of stoats and weasels! This is indeed the end of everything!” and so on (I quote from memory). * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * “They’re going to mine the Coal-Seam, deep-inclining “Beneath Newstead’s Foundations, old and true – “And, with a bit of Luck, ’twill fall right through!” “Of course, they’ll have to promise to repair “The Walls and Floors and Windows, and the whole “Account will be drawn up, as fair as fair – * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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“And then the Pile will shift, and sink, and roll – “The Hall, the Chapel, Gardens, and the Well – “And Newstead Abbey will be here in Hell!” The Bard and Fiend shooks Hands; then, through the Haze, Old Nick slipped off for his terrene Dominions (For you or me, this Journey would take Days, But Sathan soars on HyperSpatial Pinions) And faxed all oe’r the Asset-Stripping Maze, Directing his brave Corporate-Raider Minions – Who ran the World, with Banks, and Funds, and Legions – To transport Newstead to th’Infernal Regions. Lord Byron felt quite smug, as off Nick flew; He turned to his beloved Sis, Augusta (Who’d been most pleased to Plunge there with him too, And had more Power o’er him than any Muster Of Demons, Afrits, Djinns, or Manitoux) And said, “Dear Goose, now drop that shameful Duster! “I’ve come to an Arrangement with my Friend “To bring your Household Bondage to an End.” “Because He likes my Verse (unlike you, Gus) “He’s condescended to ascend to Earth, “And funnel Newstead Abbey down to us!” Goose, seeing what a Deal of horrid Mirth Sathan was setting up, gave him a Buss (Her favourite Video Star was Colin Firth) And cried “Oh, ‘ra! You’ll be the perfect Mentor “For their exciting Byron Study Centre!” * * The announcement of the proposed mining, and that of the planned establishment of a Byron Study Centre at Newstead, occurred on the same day (July 8th 1997). Neither the mining nor the Study Centre has materialised. The Poet asked “Their what?” with Brows askew: “Haven’t you heard?” cooed Gus, all disingenuous; “They’re going to set up a posh H.Q. “To study You, and Me, and what’s more strenuous, “Your Verse and Letters! there’ll be quite a Few

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“Of those whose methods we’ve both found so tenuous – “Bold Andrew Nicholson, half-crazed Lacan, “Marx, Moyra Haslett, and Jerome McGann!” “They’ve got it all planned out, though – not a single “Expert in you or yours will be appointed: “***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** – “***** Abelina Cratchit ***** ***** “***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** – “***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** – “***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** att – “***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** att.” Lord Byron went pale; he’d not looked for this, And thinking of the Post-Grads, all Cloud-capp’d, Who’d delve, and deconstruct, and read amiss (For they would all fall through too, and be trapped) Envisioning their e-mails, and the Bliss Of being Patronized, Psyched-Out, and Mapped, He heard before him Sathan’s “Ha! I’ve caught yer! “This won’t allay, it will increase your torture!” He signed decisively (though he felt ill) To ugly Beezlebub, his most loyal Minder; And from his Coat a silk Purse seemed to spill; The Demon slunk off, sleek as a Sidewinder, To get two forgèd Passports, done with Skill (Forget dull Dante’s misleading Reminder About None leaving Hell – there’s great Mobility In the Beyond – for Cash, though, not Nobility.) But now a rumbling Noise over their Heads Announced that Something made of Stone approached, And so they footed featly o’er the Leads, Before the Abbey, Lakes and Woods encroached; They planned (how do we dare such desperate Deeds, Knowing how rapidly we’ll be reproached?) To start (what end more perfect for our Story?) Nine hundred thousand Years in Purgatory. As off they try to fly, Hell’s Ceiling yawns –

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As if the Earth has just turned hæmorragic – And through it splash Lakes, Outhouses, Woods, Lawns, Glass, Masonry, all Beasts anthropophagic, Settling at once, at rest between its Bournes (As if done by Industrial Light and Magic); Without a Look behind, though, the Escapers Present at Hell’s Grim Bar their forgèd Papers. But well-oiled Beezlebub has let them down – The Passports which they’ve bought are disallowed! For such Things normally you’de fry dark-brown; Mindful of his old Scheme, though, Sathan bowed, And, showed them, smiling, what he’d brought from Town – At which they stared, then laughed, then screamed aloud, With high Hilarity and Sibling Mirth (Than which there is no finer Mirth on Earth). Before the Mansion lay a lucid Lake, Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed By a River, which its softened Way did take In Currents through the calmer Water spread Around; the Wild Fowl nestled in the Brake, And Sedges brooding in their liquid Bed; The Woods sloped downwards to its Brink, and Hinds Grazed peacefully around ... the Vane of Winds? “Much bigger than I’d thought,” yawned the Arch-Fiend; “‘Designed by Vanbrugh,’ says the A.A. Book, “‘Made famous in the Eighties, when ’twas screened “‘As Brideshead ...’ Quite a darling little nook ...” Convulsed, his Victims on each other leaned, And shouted, as their Sides with Laughter shook, Despite the Way He frowned, and fleered, and lowered – “That Thing’s not Newstead! It’s called Castle Howard!” The Devil saw how He’d been made a Monkey, And dragged his Crew to Doom, like any sinners (Their chairman served Down There as Fox’s flunkey); The Bard and Gus were Guests at Hell’s best Dinners; The Centre flourished – Byron found it funky, Conceding that they weren’t bad, for Beginners; Of three of them, in sooth, he grew quite fond:

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Ken Purslow, Maureen Crisp, and Geoffrey Bond. To all of this, God lent no speculation – Though it contained more horror, laughs and drama Than Heaven’s anechoic desolation; He sat as audience, his own Self-Embalmer, To endless Hymns of Self-Devaluation – Ignoring the whole tuneless Diorama, Caged-up and lonely, like old J.G.Borkman – And listening to Palestrina on his Walkman. For Castle Howard – one Morn, with a wan Look, Sad Hell watched It dissolve and disappear – Old God had sent an Insubstantial Spook, Leaving His Brideshead gem in wild Yorkshire (He’d watched the Videos, not read The Book); Deflated Sathan, stopped in this Career, Remembered how J.R. bounced back in Dallas – And started mining under Blenheim Palace ...

CYNTHIA RIDGE: THE FORGOTTEN POET OF NEWARK ABELINA CRATCHIT First published NBSR, 2005

The late eighteenth-century ballad revival, inspired by such major talents as Anne Bannerman and Johann Goethe, has yet to be investigated fully by scholars. In particular the achievement of Cynthia Ridge has never received full acknowledgement. Ridge has unfairly gone down in legend as possessing a propensity for extreme personal violence. Born at Newark on January 22nd 1798, as a toddler she was often noticed pulling the wings off flies, gaining from the local vicar the nickname “Herculena” after the Greek hero who strangled snakes in his cradle. At the age of eight she was once sent supperless to bed for impaling an entire litter of kittens on a hay fork; and it came as no surprise when she was suspected by the locals of a widespread series of mass ewe-maimings, which rendered one Nottinghamshire spring more than usually bloody. Nothing, however, could be proved against her. Rumours abounded that she was also responsible for a medley of supposedly suggestive and blasphemous nursery-rhymes which some Newark children were once found singing behind the church on a Sunday morning. Again, however, nothing could be proved against her. At twenty-five she married a local man named Ben Slunglow; the fact that he was found in the bloodsoaked bridal bed on the morning after their wedding, with his virile member in his ear, was at first attributed to Cynthia’s activities; but as the local squire’s wife, Lady Susan Rampant, had in fact spent the night with Ben – for the famous Nottinghamshire custom of droit de la dame was by no means defunct at that time – Lady Susan was found guilty, and hanged. The ballad sold and sung at the foot of her gallows was attributed to Cynthia; Lady Susan’s notorious and voracious bisexuality was kept quiet out of respect to her husband and family. But still nothing could be proved against Cynthia. Grief at Ben’s premature demise (to say nothing of its nature) was assumed by her admirers to be the reason for what Cynthia did next. She

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was taken in by Ben’s mourning family, who treated her as one of their own; however, within a week of her arrival at their remote farmhouse – halfway between Southwell and Calverton – terrible screams were heard one Saturday night, which the neighbours at first attributed to the energetic physical sports to which the Slunglow family were famously addicted at that time of the week. However, when two days passed and the screams were still going on, they decided to investigate, and found Mrs and Mrs Slunglow, their younger son Harold, and their daughters Ermintrude, Daisy and Buttercup, as well as JonCam, the farm dog, all crucified, inverted, over the farm sludge-pit. Cynthia sat calmly at lunch, claiming the family’s injuries were self-inflicted. It was too late to save the humans; but JonCam was taken down with the help of a claw-hammer, and apart from a slight but noticeable limp, lived on happily until the 1830s, much fêted by all. Here lies the problem of Cynthia Ridge’s case: violence, both rhetorical and physical, presents the greatest challenge to gendercomplementary feminist poetics, in part because it seems so clearly attributable to men and masculine interests. Ridge’s violence exceeds the functions of rebellion and rage, and demonstrates the precariousness of women’s status as reservoirs of benevolence and sympathy, qualities necessary to the new social order’s claim to moral progress. De Lauretis’s critique of Derrida’s dangerous eliding of the gendering of violence is persuasive and important – must the subject of violence be masculine (even if not male?). I suggest that the answer is no and that, even while we keep in mind De Lauretis’s crucial gendering of violence as masculine, we must continue to examine how Cynthia Ridge’s writings explore the possibility of a female subject of violence. It will not do to make Ridge’s violence disappear, or to dismiss it as an effect of “mental illness”: her position as sadist and mass-murderer is inseparable from her position as author, as well as from her exclusion from power and literary status within the masculinist symbolic order. Why should not the female mind receive pleasure from the silencing, not only of the male mind, but of other female minds, too, to say nothing of the canine one, as was so nearly the case with JonCam? Cynthia Ridge was hanged in the town square of Newark on January 22nd, 1824. Some spectators claimed they heard her crooning a ballad to herself as she ascended the scaffold, something about “On this ****ing day I would have completed my twenty-sixth ****ing year”; but an attempt to transcribe it all, valiantly made by the reporter from the Hucknall Advertiser, was in vain. Nothing could be proved, and so Cynthia Ridge went to her death with her creative talent unrecorded, and

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her poetry unheard, a silenced victim of the patriarchy against which we must suppose her to have been in revolt.

THE EDITOR’S TALE MARION KINGSTON STOCKING MEETS QUENTIN TARANTINO First published NBSR, 2006

“Ah, you publishing scoundrel!” There was a loud report, very near, and he screamed, and collapsed on the floor. Nothing in his life had prepared him for the agony of being shot through the kneecap. His head spun, his vision went black, and the knowledge that a part of him that had been whole, strong and reliable beyond question for nearly forty years, was now smashed beyond repair, made him want to vomit – except that he had no energy to vomit, so much of him went into fighting the pain which welled up from his leg and engulfed him. He was aware that he had dropped all the papers, scattering them over a ten-foot area. Even in the extremity of his agony he couldn’t forget the precious papers. His right trouser-leg felt warm and wet, and one or two of the papers had drops of his blood on them. His first, very distant, practical thought was that he had try and get out of the palazzo – somehow … so he started to drag himself across the floor of the sala, away from the writing-desk, towards the door. But she wouldn’t let him. “Stay still, you yankee swine, or I’ll shoot the other leg off too!” He rolled over, and stared. She was sitting six feet away, in a rocking chair, which she must have pulled rapidly up the corridor during his initial spasms of shock. She was already rocking to and fro, and smiling. No, not smiling, grinning … in her hand she held a gun, a Colt .45, which, he couldn’t help noticing, she was holding in a professional way, cradling her right wrist in her left hand, and pointing the gun straight at his lower limbs. A Colt, he knew, was a heavy gun, not designed for a ninety-sixyear-old woman. “Please …” was all he could mutter.

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“Please what? Please don’t shoot me again? Please get a doctor? Please let me crawl out? Please get me a gondola? Please let me go home to Boston? Which is it?” “Please don’t shoot me again.” “I mayn’t, but then again I may. That’ll depend on you.” Her voice had changed. It wasn’t quiet, enfeebled and sad, the way it had been – it was loud, and cold, and mocking, like a witch’s. Almost masculine, like the long down on her chin and upper lip. He could say nothing. “Did you really think I was stupid? Did you really think I hadn’t lived nearly a hundred years without learning to see through men like you at sight? The first shake of your clammy hand I knew what you were after. The first smell of your Florian’s coffee-breath I knew you were a liar and a fraud. I saw you coming the moment you turned up on the stair. Why, your first hypocritical smile made me sick. And every bunch of stinking flowers you sent us polluted the room.” His shock was horrible to see. He wondered where her niece was, and looked down the corridor. “She’s not here. She went out. She knew what I was going to do, and didn’t want to watch. She’s a feeble idiot. Can’t stand blood.” He stared. He couldn’t take in what she’d just said. “But …” He realised it might be best not to finish, but it was too late. “But what? But you thought she was a friend of yours? But you thought you’d got round her, with your smart yankee plans and your see-through, semi-literate yankee smarm? But you didn’t realise she’s my friend, not yours, and that she repeated every lying word of yours to me the evening after you said it? But you didn’t realise she despises you and your literarystatus-grubbing sort, your second-hand bookshop smell, as much as I do? She has better ways of passing the time. Right now I expect she’s over at Sant’ Elena, entertaining herself with the gondolier.” She cackled loudly at the expression of shock and moral outrage on his face. The realisation that they’d seen him coming, and had set him up, made him even sicker than did the pain in his leg, or than the fear of what it was exactly that he’d been set up for. Even sicker than what she’d just implied about Miss Bordereau and the gondolier. He’d thought he was the cunning one – he’d been quite proud, despite his own small scruples, of the way the seemingly simple Miss Bordereau had seemed to listen to his talk, had seemed to yield to his persuasion and flattery, and had seemed to agree to give him the key to the writing-desk that held the papers. He’d thought he

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was a winner, a real man, a wheeler-and-dealer. And all the time it’d been they who’d been fooling him. He felt his pride go. His life was over. He’d never be able to talk to anyone again. He’d never be able to trust anyone again … he realised the two-facedness of such a reflection, and laughed at himself, through the agony. “What’re you laughing at, you hypocrite? There’s nothing funny about what’s happening to you. Crawl back to that cabinet, and sit up.” “Please …” “Crawl!” She pulled back the hammer of the Colt. “No, please …” Uncomprehending, he obeyed, and dragged himself back to the writing-desk, through the papers, some of which got redder still as they came into contact with the blood now oozing more freely from his trouserleg. “Now, sit up!” Almost shouting with pain, he pulled himself into a sitting position and leaned his back against the writing-desk. What did she want him to do? “Now, yankee, we’re going to have a talk. I’m going to give you a little interview. A little test.” All he could do was stare at her. “Why d’you want these bits of paper? What were you going to do with them?” He knew that honesty wasn’t just the best policy. With the gun pointing at him, and with her understanding him the way she did, it was the only policy. “What to do with them? Well, I guess …” She chortled. “You guess! That’s what he thought yankees said all the time – ‘I guess’ – he tried to trap them into saying it, and was upset when he failed, and they didn’t.” She chortled again. “And you just said it without prompting. Well? What d’you ‘guess’?” He repeated the phrase humbly. “I guess I’d take them home, and edit them, and get them published.” “Why?” “Why? Why, because they’re by him … or to him … or about him …” “And who’s he? Or who was he?” “But you know who he was!” “Let’s just pretend I don’t.” “He was … he was the greatest English poet of his age …” “And?”

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“He was the second most famous person in the world, after Napoleon …” “And?” “And he was the most influential writer England had ever had. He was translated and published all over Europe … at once … everybody read him – Pushkin – Goethe – Stendhal – everyone – you couldn’t escape his influence …” “And what did you do, under his influence?” He’d never really thought about it. “Er … you wrote in a new way … er … a revolutionary way … you wrote about men who were independent, and mysterious, and free … and about the women who loved them …” he felt nervous and self-conscious and stupid; but she didn’t react. “And?” The gun was still pointing at him. “And you … you … defied tyranny! You wrote about liberty …” “What did he say about liberty? Give me an example.” He was sweating, but had to answer. He searched his memory with desperation. “Er … yes … um … ‘Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but flying, streams like the thunder-storm against the wind; thy trumpet voice, though broken now and dying, The loudest still the tempest leaves behind …’” “That’s enough of that. What else did he do?” “He died, fighting for Greece!” “He did, hey? Why’d he want to do that?” “Why die for Greece?” “Why fight for Greece? What was Greece to him?” “It was … it was the cradle of European civilization! The fountainhead of all that makes Western man what he is!” “You mean, it turns out Western men like you? Huh! Why else did he love Greece?” “He loved her mountains … and her islands … ‘Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung …’” “And?” He was, in his acute physical agony, stumped. He rolled his eyes, pleading. But she wouldn’t let up. “And? Did he love her women?” “Yes! Yes! He loved her women! ‘Maid of Athens, ere we part, give, oh give me back my heart!’” To his amazement, she spat. Not at him, just on the floor.

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“That’s enough of that horse-shit. Now – pick up one of those bits of paper, and read from it. Any bit.” He laid his hand on the nearest paper, which was a big bundle sewn together, and looked at it, and looked at her. “READ, I said!” He read, stuttering. “Is thy face like thy Mother’s? my fair child Ada! sole daughter of my house and heart? When last I saw thy young blue eyes they smiled, and then we parted – not as now we part –” “That’s enough! Now … tell me what that is.” “It’s the opening of the third canto of Childe Harold. This must be the copy you made for him.” “It is. Now – who’s this Ada?” “Ada was his … his daughter …” The way she looked at him when he said “daughter” made him feel terrible; he didn’t know why. As far as he knew, she had no children. “Yes … his daughter?” “Yes … and in this section he’s crossing the English Channel, and she’s appeared to him in a dream …” “Why’s he crossing the Channel? Why isn’t he at home with her?” “Why … because he’s left England …” “Really? Why hasn’t he taken her with him?” “Because he’s left his wife …” “He’s left his wife?” “Well no, his wife has left him, and taken their daughter with him …” “You’re sure about that? You’re sure his wife left him?” “That’s it! His wife left him, and so he left England …” “But he didn’t want to leave his daughter? He loved her?” “Oh yes! You can tell from the poem!” “Give it to me.” She shuffled on the floor with her feet and rocked with her arms and brought the rocking-chair up to where he lay. He stretched his hand out, and, with her pistol still cocked and pointing at him, gave her the manuscript. Then, in one seamless movement, she shuffled the chair away out of his reach, put the revolver in her lap, opened her bag, and took out a box of matches. Looking him straight in the eye, she took out a match, struck it, and set fire to the bundle of paper. As he gaped, she held the paper aloft as it burned down, and let its black remnants swirl down to the floor between them. All he could do was stare. “You burnt it!” “I burnt it.” “You burnt your own fair-copy of Childe Harold!”

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“I did, didn’t I?” She seemed proud, and slightly surprised, as if something had at last, and unexpectedly, been accomplished. “Now,” she said, “pick up another bit.” “But not if you’re going to burn it!” She fired, and hit the drawer of the writing-desk, six inches away from his ear. Splinters flew everywhere, and he felt deafened. “Pick up another bit!” He did so. Blood was now dripping from his ear, where a flying fragment of wood had cut it. “Read it!” He stared. All there were were two lines, with an ink mark swirling through them, but still legible. “We are entwined – let death come slow or fast, the tie which bound the first endures the last,” he muttered. “Couldn’t hear you – louder!” “We are entwined – let death come slow or fast, the tie which bound the first endures the last,” he panted. “And what’s that?” “It’s the last part of one of his poems to his sister,” he said, terrified. “Which one?” He couldn’t remember whether these lines concluded the Stanzas to Augusta or the Epistle to Augusta. Which was which? The pain confused him; but he couldn’t have told anyway. “It’s the Epistle to Augusta,” he hesitated. “It is,” she snarled. “Now, tell me about him and Augusta.” He didn’t know what to say. How much did she know? How much did anybody know? “Well … they were very close.” “What d’you mean, ‘close’?” He didn’t want her to fire again. “Mrs Beecher Stowe says they committed incest.” “She does, does she, the yankee bitch? What does she know about it?” “She says Lady Byron told her.” “And d’you think they did?” How to reply, and avoid being shot? Probably they did commit incest – but what was the right answer, here and now? “Yes, I think they did.” “Huh! Read the rest of it. Start at the start.” He looked at the paper, turning it over, trying to see if it unfolded; it didn’t. “I can’t – there isn’t any more – that’s all there is. Just the last two lines, and they’re crossed out.”

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“Whose handwriting is it in?” “It – it looks like yours.” “It is. Hand it over.” He gave it to her, staring up the barrel of the Colt as he did so. “Where’s the rest of it?” he ventured. “I burnt the rest of it in 1816.” And as she said that, she burnt the small remainder, before his face. “Why did you burn it then?” “Because he’d just spent twenty minutes describing in detail how much better his sister was in bed than I was. And how funny she was, whereas I never made him laugh. And how she could always make him do what she wanted, and that I never would be able to make him do anything.” Again, he could do nothing but gape. He was seriously out of his depth. He’d never been any good with women, never been married or even engaged, never kept a mistress, never understood them, and had never heard anything of this sort, not in relation to anyone. She peered at the papers on the floor. “Take that one near the foot of the desk, by itself, and read it.” He picked the one she’d indicated, and read: “‘We go I believe in two days – Are you satisfied? – It would make me happy to finish Chillon for you. It is said that you expressed yourself decisively last evening that it is impossible to see you at Diodati; If you will trust it down here I will take the greatest possible care of it; and finish it in an hour or two …’” He looked up at her, and saw she was in another world, mouthing the words with him. She knew the letter by heart, and she was weeping. He thought it best to ignore the fact, and continued in a monotone, trying not to show he knew how it made her feel: “‘Remember how short a time I have to tease you and that you will soon be left to your dear-bought freedom. Let me have Chillon, then pray do – and one of your own servants with it and some pens. Tell me one thing else? – Shall I never see you again? Not once again. When you had such bad news to announce was it not a little cruel to behave so harshly all the day. Pray send me an answer directly – I cannot wait.’” She came out of her reverie, looked at him, and at once went cold and hard again. “Well, Mr Editor? Tell me what that one was about.” “I guess,” he used the phrase without hesitation, “that you’ve started a printer’s copy of The Prisoner of Chillon, and want to finish it before he leaves town.” “Why should I want to finish it?”

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He was re-reading the letter, and saw the answer. He sensed she was going to kill him anyway, whatever he said, so he went on. He hoped to upset her. He wanted to upset her. “Because you need an excuse to see him once again, and you’re afraid you never will, without the poem?” Her look hardened into one of absolute hatred. “Very good, hypocrite! You learn fast! Now …” she scanned the floor and spoke slowly. “Pick up that bundle with the blue string round it, and read the third letter from the top.” Her tone made him even more scared. What would reading this paper lead to? He fumbled with the blue string, whiffled through for the third letter. It was in her hand, with lots of crossings-out. He began to read: “Great Marlow, January 12th 1818. My dearest friend … This is my little darling’s first birthday …” He paused. She caused the Colt’s hammer to click; he went on. “… so I think I cannot do better than to write you a letter. How much do I wish you could see her: she is just now so very interesting. I do not say that she is a pretty child though she certainly is very far from ugly but she has good points about her face – pretty eyes of a deep dazzling blue more like the colour of the waters of the lake of Geneva under a summer sky than any thing else I ever saw, rosy projecting lips and a little square chin divided in the middle exactly like your own ...” His blood, in so far as it could, froze. He hadn’t realized. No-one had realized. She had had a child. This woman was Allegra’s mother. He’d been shot by Allegra’s mother. “… In the little bit of silver paper you will find a lock of her pretty hair you will see the colour but you cannot see the curls on her head which makes the back of it look quite divine. Her nose is bad; her cheeks also and her figure very much that of a boy’s. She can neither speak nor walk but whenever she dislikes any thing she calls out upon Papa.” He almost forgot the pain he was in, in the thrill of discovery, the drama of revelation. He looked at her, but this time she wasn’t mouthing the words, wasn’t weeping – just staring at him with a cold complacency, staring down the barrel of the gun, over the sight. Without being ordered to, he went on. “… The violence of her disposition is discouraging but yet it is so mixed up with affection and vivacity I scarcely” (the word was “sarcely”) “know whether to laugh or to cry. My dear friend how I envy you. You will have a little darling to crawl to your knees and pull you till you take her up – then she will sit on the crook of your arm and you will give her

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raisins out of your own plate and a little drop of wine from your own glass and she will think herself a little Queen in Creation.” “That’s enough,” she snapped. “Now. Annotate that.” “I didn’t know … I’m sorry …” “You didn’t know what? That Allegra was mine?” “No. Her mother is never mentioned.” “They don’t want to disgrace me!” she cackled. “They don’t want to ruin my reputation after seventy-five years, to make me a fallen woman in the eyes of the world!” She rocked so hard with laughter the chair almost overtoppled. “When you think how many women would have given their back teeth to have been the mother of his child! How many would have ‘born the badge of shame with pride’!” She put the last phrase into imaginary inverted commas, sneering at it. “What they don’t know … ‘giving her raisins from his own plate’! Did I really say that? He’d never give her anything from his own plate. He’d never tolerate a woman at table, let alone a child of his own. He hated being a father. He had two bastards in Nottingham, and never saw them. ‘Is thy face like thy mother’s, my child’ – hypocrisy! Lies! As if he cared what any of his children looked like! When my baby died in that damned convent …” She remembered that she was “testing” him. “… how long d’you think it had been since he’d visited her?” “I don’t know – a month?” “Thirteen months! Over a year! She hadn’t seen either of her parents for years when she died! And all because he hated me so much because I was her mother, and hated his wife because she was Ada’s mother, and because he didn’t want to see that when you’re a father, you’re no longer a boy – you’re no longer a pretty boy, that other pretty boys will worship!” He knew this was mad. “Oh, surely …” he thought of all the women in Venice. “Oh yes, he went to bed with anyone and anything that was warm – with women it was just a game for him – that’s why he liked his sister – for her it was just a game, too – but with boys!! That’s what he couldn’t do without! That’s what set his body alight! And he’d had to do without it for years! And that – that’s why he went to Greece, Mr Hypocrite! Mountains and fountains and islands and highlands and parthenons and arthenons be damned!” She’d worked up more than enough saliva for another spit on the floor. “All lies and self-delusions! It was the Greek boys he went for! The Greek boys he slimmed down for! And he didn’t like paying for them – he was too sentimental – they had to love him! Anyway, it seems he didn’t get any when he got there – ha! He was too old and bald by then for

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anyone to love him! Ha! ‘Tread those reviving passions down, unworthy manhood; – unto thee indifferent should the smile or frown of Beauty be!’ He’d write anything to make himself feel better.” Suddenly she had another thought for her “test”. “Why didn’t he finish Don Juan?” “Well … he would have … he wanted to … he had it all planned … but going to Greece got in the way …” he didn’t want to say ‘I guess’ this time. “He loved writing it more than anything else – more than the Guiccioli – that’s why she persuaded him to stop it – not because it was sarcastic about women, but because she was jealous of it. Mary told me so. Guess who else the Guiccioli was jealous of?” “Er … Lady Blessington?” “No! she was jealous of me! Jealous of me because I’d had his bastard child! She thought that if she had a child by him, he wouldn’t leave her! The fool! Didn’t she see? To have his child was the best way to make sure he’d leave you! But he was bored by her anyway. Mary told me she was.” He was proud of the fact that, despite the blood coming from his leg, despite the waves of pain shooting all over his body, he retained his researcher’s need to know. “But you haven’t said – why did he not finish Don Juan?” She’d exhausted her ancient frame, and rocked more slowly, rocked herself almost to a standstill. “Because if he’d continued, Juan would have had to stop being a boy, and become a man – get married, commit himself, grow up …” He could see that the weight of the .45 was getting too much, even for both her hands. Could he move quickly, jump on her and wrestle it from her, with only one knee to support him? He’d lost a lot of blood, and could barely move for the pain, so in terms of strength they were about equal, and in terms of agility she, at the age of ninety-six, probably had the advantage. But he had to do something. She was now nodding – or appeared to be. Without really deciding to, he dragged himself towards her on one knee and both hands. He reached out – grabbed for the pistol – and it went off, whether or not because of his movement in trying to grab it from her, whether or not by her volition. A pain even worse thrashed through the thigh of his other leg, and he felt even more blood pour down his other trouser-leg than had poured down the first. He could tell that his leg was broken, and that the shot had severed an artery.

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“Thought you might try some such thing, you American dullard,” she said, looking at him through half-closed eyes, as if falling asleep. “Done it now, haven’t you?” “Please, don’t fall asleep,” he begged. “I need a doctor. I need tourniquets. Help me. I’ll bleed to death …” She didn’t appear to react, and he could see that the short tussle had finished her, and that she was dying too. He couldn’t move, and everything about him and under him was getting wetter and wetter. They remained still. He was getting cold, freezing cold, and all she did was murmur something from time to time. After half an hour he realised that if only he could cover himself with the papers, he’d get warm again, and live. If only he could cover himself with the papers … but where were the papers? If only he could cover himself with them, he’d get warm again, and live. Through a thick haze of paper he saw her open her eyes and stare at him. “No, Mr Godwin,” she said, “that’s not where we keep the parakeets, that’s where we keep the fonts for printing.” And then she shut her eyes and seemed to sleep. And so did he. —————————— Miss Bordereau returned at a quarter past midnight. With her was the gondolier, and between them the inert intimacy which comes from much gross carnal contact, devoid of affection or even of friendship. But they still reacted as one when they saw the scene at the end of the sala, and ran towards it together. They almost slipped over in the pool of blood which had come from the man’s smashed legs. In the pool, Miss Bordereau noticed, numerous paper fragments floated soggily, beyond restoration, beyond redemption, forever useless, forever illegible. She knew at once what to do. Aunt Claire would have wanted it. While the gondolier went to fetch the carabinieri, she scraped the paper lumps together, and dumped them handful by handful into a linen bag. Carefully, to avoid slipping, she then took them in the bag to the stair, and threw them, soaked through with the blood of their late, would-be editor, into the Grand Canal.

BYRON’S LITERARY RECEPTION IN NORTH-EAST KARELIA OSMO RAUTAVAARA First published NBSR, 2006

(A piece written after reading the two volumes of Byron’s European Reception) The story of Byron’s literary reception in North-East Karelia in the third quarter of the nineteenth century is a subject which has never been satisfactorily studied. This is unfortunate, for much is to be learned from it about both Byron and the civilisation of North-East Karelia. As JukkaMatti Storgårds, Head of Business English at Kemijårvi Technical College, puts it, “Oh, Byron! he’s great! I thought he was brilliant in Trainspotting. Didn’t he marry Angelina Jolie … ?” North-East Karelia in the nineteenth century was an Arctic wasteland, populated largely by Lapps and their wandering reindeer herds. Some Finnish fur-trappers were occasionally to be found, regarded askance by the aboriginals because of their sexual peculiarities in relation to reindeer, and their habit of trying to take saunas whenever the sun shone. Most North-East Karelians never wash at all, even today – temperatures of minus seventy degrees are common even in July, and dirt is a vital factor in their body-insulation. Few Finns survived their sauna-attempts. Some Russian Old Believers had taken up residence in North-East Karelia round about 1690, mistakenly believing themselves to be in Canada; but by 1850 they’d either frozen to death, or been disabused and had moved on. In this culture, Byron’s reception was of necessity limited, to begin with. Little value was placed on literacy. Indeed, a survey carried out by the British and Foreign Bible Society – the fourth one the Society attempted, the first three having been found frozen stiff two years in each case after they’d set out – revealed that there were no books, printing presses, bookshops, publishing houses, or even writing materials, anywhere in North-East Karelia. Communication over long distances was either verbal, or consisted of pictures burnt into tree-bark with a red-hot

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iron. There was poetry of a sort, mostly either nonsense rhymes used for singing children to sleep, or spell-chants used by the shamans to ensure good health for the reindeer herds. One Russian poet, Koklofty Dolgorukov, came from St Petersburg in 1825 to escape being sent to Siberia as a Decembrist. Full of naïve enthusiasm, he attempted to interest the natives in his poems, and even learned one of the local sub-dialects in order to translate them. But they were about lands where the sunshine heated people up and made them feel passionate about one another. Such things were not understood by the North-East Karelians, for whom the weather makes love and sex almost impossible. The engendering of children is a risky business, involving as it does the removal of clothing from at least part of the body, and it is usual for the whole family to lie on top of the couple attempting it, to keep them warm for the three or so minutes which is all North-East Karelians take. After a few months of incomprehension, the despairing Dolgorukov wandered off in search of civilisation elsewhere, and was never seen again. Then nothing happened for forty-five years. The 1830 revolution in France, the 1832 Polish revolt, the 1848 revolutions, Garibaldi and his Thousand, Bismark and German Unification, and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, all occurred without anyone in North-East Karelia being any the wiser. Deprived of all knowledge of Byron, the country and its culture slept. Suddenly things changed. On June 8th 1872, the Lucy Loo, a tramp steamer bound for Archangel, ran aground near Honnigsvåg, drowning most of its crew. Of those who dragged themselves ashore, several froze to death instantly, and a smaller party were eaten by the polar bears common to that region. But one man survived. He was Hector Simpkins, a bankrupt greengrocer from Mansfield who was travelling to Archangel in a lastditch attempt to redeem his fortunes. Apparently insensible to the cold, he staggered several miles inland, and collapsed within sight of an East Karelian encampment. The compassionate natives took him in, and attempted to revive him by all lying on top of him in their usual manner: but he died of asphyxiation. Simpkins had managed to salvage his trunk from the wreckage of the Lucy Loo; and, as the villagers opened it, they noticed that it was lined with marked paper. This was a substance of which most of them had no experience – but one very old man remembered that Koklofty Dolgorukov had attempted to entertain them by deciphering the marks on a very similar thing, which, said the old man, made him very emotional – as he spoke from the marks, he would gesticulate, laugh, and weep, as if possessed by a spirit. The stuff which lined Hector Simpkins’ trunk was the same sort of

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material, and the marks on it just like what the old man remembered. It was, decided the elders, a totem, an object of magic, the stranger’s way of communicating with the world of the dead. Burials being impossible because of the depth and solidity of the permafrost, Simpkins’ body was exposed on a trestle of birch-branches when the natives and their herds left the area. Within ten days there was no flesh left on his bones – but the lining of his trunk had been affixed to the birch-branches as a gesture, and when a year later the natives came back they were impressed by the fact that some of the white stuff with black markings was still fluttering in the arctic blizzards. Little did the villagers realise that what had been lining Simpkins’ trunk had in fact been sheets from a remaindered 1820 John Murray edition of the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, which the Mansfield grocer had picked up as waste paper. The natives never threw anything away, so they removed the paper from his burial platform, and, when the call of nature made it absolutely vital for them to ease their bowels (something which occurred only about once a week, so severe was the constipation endemic to this people because of the low temperatures), they used it to wipe themselves, arguing that the stranger’s gods were not their gods, and would not mind. Byron had finally arrived in North-East Karelia.

MOVIEMAKERS DISCOVER ROBERT SOUTHEY BY OUR ARTS CORRESPONDENT First published NBSR, 2009

The dynamite rediscovery of the epic poems of Robert Southey is not confined to the dusty corridors of academe. Film-makers the world over have re-read him, and are anxious to mine his works for the chances they offer of sexy and enthralling plots, set amidst spectacular and exotic scenery, with dozens of fascinating characters. This is exciting news for Midge Muckerjee, newly-appointed Professor of Transcendence and Interiority at the University of Papplewick. “Southey’s epics!” she gasped when we phoned her. “They’re so – so revisionist and problematic! Southey is a writer who provoked and continues to provoke unease!” In Hollywood, Oliver Stone has Christian Bale lined up to play the lead in Thalaba the Destroyer: location shooting will start in Helmand province, Afghanistan, next April: “We’re confident,” says Stone, “that when the Taliban read Southey’s great poem, they’ll realise what a truly authentic Islamic document it is, and provide us with all the support we need. Displacing Biblical language into Thalaba’s selective recovery of orientalist and Islamic motivs serves to voice a radicalized Christian perspective despite all its deceptive trappings of orientalism!” In Mexico, shooting has already begun on Werner Herzog’s film of Madoc, with Ioan Gruffud as the hero: “only the authentic Central American locations,” says Herzog, “can do justice to the preternatural insight Southey shows in his descriptions – it’ll be just like shooting Aguirre all over again. The context for Southey’s shift from a radical Peruvian Pantisocracy to the militant Christian and British imperialism of his imaginary American colony ‘Caermadoc’ was of course the global struggle between Britain and Napoleonic France for imperial paramountcy!” Here in the U.K., a third Welsh star, Anthony Hopkins, has signed up, with Shekhar Kapur to direct, for the leading role of Ladurlad in The Curse of Kehama. Natalie Portman will be his daughter Kailyal, Ray Winstone the zombie rapist Arvalan, and Peter Dinklage will be Kehama himself. Shekhar Kapur was, he confesses, overwhelmed by the innate Hindu truth of the epic at first

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reading. “Southey,” he enthuses, “was considerably less careful than Sir William Jones in hiding his penis – that is, in covering up the sexually explicit aspects of Hindu mythology and religion”. Keira Knightley is a natch for Joan of Arc, and Robert Redford, who’s impressed by the poem’s anti-imperialism, will both direct and play the Duke of Bedford – a rare assay into villainy for the veteran moviemaker / superstar. In Spain, Pedro Almodóvar has abandoned his usual domestic / satirical style, and is all set to shoot Roderick, Last of the Goths: Javier Bardem will be Roderick, with Penelope Cruz as the temptress Florinda, and a cast of thousands. “It’ll be El Cid, plus sexy jokes!” beams Almodóvar. But all these projects fade into insignificance when placed against Kenneth Branagh’s planned movie of A Vision of Judgement – “It’s a hymn to everything I love about England,” admits Branagh, whose magnificent films A Midwinter’s Tale and The Magic Flute recently broke all box-office records at the newly-restored Bijoux arthouse cinema in Mansfield. Branagh has already signed up Michael Caine himself to play George III, with Felicity Jones as the Angel on the Battlements, and Tom Cruise hotly tipped to play the Veiled but Ineffable Presence. Branagh stalwart Brian Blessed will be in evidence as usual, doubling the nonspeaking roles of Junius and Wilkes, and Nick Nolte will be on hand as George Washington. With artists like these at the helm … Byron, eat your heart out. (As we go to press, in fact, we hear that Channel Four’s planned mini-series of The Corsair, which was to have starred Rupert Everett, has been cancelled through lack of interest.)

CONTRIBUTORS’ GUIDE First published NBSR, 2009 Dear ——— We are pleased that you have accepted the invitation to contribute to our forthcoming volume, “Then Pause, and be Enlightened!” – Byron’s Spiritual, Supernatural and Spectral Seriousness. Before you write your contribution, please study the following guidelines: 1: Don’t draw the readers’ attention to anything incongruous or grotesque in Byron’s work. This is called “making jokes”, and is collusive and corrupting – it may lead students to believe that you find literature funny, which will undermine the authority of our book. 2: Avoid being witty, which students don’t understand, and only the most experienced European academics appreciate. 3: Never be ironical – most students, especially in America, will assume that you mean what you say, and will suffer bewilderment when it’s explained that you meant the opposite. 4: Never imply that Byron makes facetious jokes. Byron is a very serious writer, dealing with deep and important issues, as we hope our volume will demonstrate. 5: Never make value judgements. Never even imply that some of Byron’s works are better than others: never write, for example, that the reason his plays are never performed is because they won’t work on the stage. Value judgements are controversial, and in a controversy, one party may lose, with consequences for funding and tenure. 6. Following on from 5, assume all statements Byron makes to be of equal value, whether in verse, drama, prose, or reported conversation. Ignore the idea that he writes in different ways in different verse-forms: few students know ottava rima from blank verse. Treat all his poetry as if it’s prose. 7. Refer to as many other recent writers in the field as possible, always in approbatory terms. Never disagree with anything that’s been said. If you do, they may (though it’s unlikely) disagree with you in turn – and in public print.

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8. Never refer to any research or criticism done before 2004, unless it’s by McGann, Marchand, or Jerome Christensen.1 No other Byron research and criticism is to be allowed a shelf-life of more than ten years. There would, if it were allowed more, soon be a serious dearth of things to write about. 9. If you find Byron contradicting himself, or being banal, ignore it, and assume the fault to be in your own misreading. Byron was a massively consistent, systematic, and profound thinker – like Kant, or Aquinas. If you have a problem here which you can’t solve, e-mail our exegesis expert Dr Maultext at paperovercrack.ac.uk, and he’ll help you out. 10. Never quote anything from the Internet. Texts from the Internet are unstable, and the Internet is in any case a temporary phenomenon, used by few. 11. Never use more than one idea in an essay. It makes you look confused, and students don’t like multiple perspectives. 12. Try and structure your essay around one of the following theories: Post-post-Feminism; New Cultural Materialism; Post-Bush Neo-neo Imperialism; or Swingingbothways Theory. 13. Mention sex, texting and video games at least once each. Students find this reassuring. 14. Never imply that you enjoy reading poetry, either by Byron or anyone else. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, it might appear to align you with one of the numerous amateur “Byron Societies” which are proliferating worldwide, where they are known to read his poetry aloud, and to “enjoy” doing so. Secondly, you may be challenged by being asked to read your own “favourite passage” aloud – a trick which many Byron scholars have fallen for, and which few survive. 15. Avoid writing in normal English. Firstly because it may lay you open to the charge that you believe that Literature relates to Life, which no academics believe any more; and secondly because, thanks to the National Curriculum, few students can read normal English anyway. If you need help, our style expert, Professor Jack Jargon, at senseincement.ac.uk, will translate your paper into a more appropriate style for our volume. Make your sentences as long as possible. Syntactical pirhouetting is welcome. 16. Refer as often as possible to Lacan, Abraham and Torok, Foucault, Levinas, Hélène Cixous, Edward Said, Judith Butler, Emma McEvoy, Alain Badiou, Slavoj Žižek, Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjellén, Friedrich Schleiermacher, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Gearóid Ó Tuathail, Achille

1: See especially McGann (ed. Soderstrom) Byron and Romanticism, C.U.P, 2002, p.294.

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Mbembe, Carl Schmitt, Giorgio Agambe, and Daniel Arasse. No-one will know who they are, which will add to your air of authority. 17. Never mention reality. Don’t even imply that it exists. We don’t want to be rumbled before the book is remaindered.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Journals B.J.: The Byron Journal K.-S.R.: The Keats-Shelley Review Romanticism

Editions The edition used is the one on the website of the International Association of Byron Societies. The Works of Lord Byron: A New, Revised and Enlarged Edition with illustrations. Poetry, ed. E.H.Coleridge (7 vols, John Murray, 18981904) Lord Byron: The Complete Poetical Works, ed. Jerome J. McGann and Barry Weller, 7 vols (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1980-93). Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (13 vols, John Murray, 1973-94). The Works of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, ed. R.E.Prothero (John Murray, 1898-1904). Lord Byron: The Complete Miscellaneous Prose, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1991). The Letters of John Murray to Lord Byron, ed. Andrew Nicholson (Liverpool University Press, 2007).

Books Beaton, Roderick. Byron’s War (Cambridge 2013). Beatty, Bernard. Byron’s Don Juan, (Barnes and Noble, 1985). Blessington, Countess of. Lady Blessington’s Conversations of Lord Byron, ed. Ernest J.Lovell Jr. (Princeton 1969). Boyes, Megan. My Amiable Mamma (1991). Cochran, Peter. (ed.) Byron and Orientalism (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2006); paperback new edition, 2008.

412

Bibliography

—. (ed.) Byron at the Theatre (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2008). —. (ed.) Byron in London (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2008). —. “Romanticism” – and Byron (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2009). —. (ed.) The Gothic Byron (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2009). —. Byron and Bob: the Literary Relationship between Byron and Robert Southey (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2010). —. (ed.) Byron and Women [and men] (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2010). —. Byron and Hobby-O, The Relationship between Byron and John Cam Hobhouse (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2010). —. (ed.) Byron’s Religions (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2011). —. Byron’s Romantic Politics (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2011). —. Byron and Italy (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2012). —. (ed.) Byron’s Poetry (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2012). —. (ed.) Aspects of Byron’s Don Juan (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2013). —. (ed.) Byron and Latin Culture (Cambridge Scholars Publications, 2013). Finlay, George. A History of Greece (Oxford 1877). Guiccioli, Teresa. Lord Byron’s Life in Italy, translated by Michael Rees, edited by Peter Cochran, (A.U.P. University of Delaware Press 2005). Hopps, Gavin (ed.) Byron’s Ghosts (Liverpool 2013). Langley Moore, Doris. Lord Byron Accounts Rendered (John Murray, 1974). Langley Moore, Doris. The Late Lord Byron (John Murray, 1961). Marchand, Leslie A., Byron: A Biography, 3 vols (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1957). McGann, Jerome J. Don Juan in Context, (John Murray, 1976). Medwin, Thomas. Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron at Pisa, ed. Ernest J.Lovell Jr. (Princeton 1966). Millingen, Julius. Memoirs of the Affairs of Greece (London, 1831). Fischer, Doucet Devin and Reiman, Donald, eds., Shelley and his Circle (Harvard 1961-2002). St.Clair, William. That Greece Might Still Be Free (Oxford 1971). —. Lord Elgin and the Marbles (Oxford 1998).

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Articles Cochran, Peter: Byron and the Birth of Arimanes, K.-S.R. 1991 pp. 49-59. —. Nature’s Gentler Errors, B.J. 1995, pp.22-35. —. One Ton Per Square Foot: the Antecedents of The Vision of Judgement. K.-S.R., 19, 2006, pp.64-75; rpt. in, in Wilson, Cheryl A. (ed.) Byron, Heritage and Legacy (Palgrave, 2008). —. Why did Byron envy Thomas Hope’s Anastasius? K.-S.R. Vol. 24, 2010, pp.76-90; rpt. with enlargements in Aspects of Byron’s Don Juan, (CSP, 2013) and Byron’s Romantic Politics (CSP, 2011). Marandi, Seyed Mohammed: The Concubine of Abydos, 2005 B.J. (2), pp.97-108. —. Byron’s Infidel and the Muslim Fisherman, K.-S.R. 20 (2006) pp.13354. Shears, Jonathon: Byron’s Aposiopesis, Romanticism 14.2 2008, p.184. Stevenson, Warren. Byron and Coleridge: The Eagle and the Dove, BJ 19 (1991) pp.114-27.

INDEX d’Alembert, Jean-Baptiste, 282&n Alexander, 311 Alfieri, Vittorio: Mirra, 136 Alighieri, Dante: Divine Comedy, The, 173 Ali Pasha (Pacha), 82, 98-103; 105, 118, 159, 224, 342-3, 354 Anglim, Philip, 220 Anstey, Christopher: New Bath Guide, The, 335 Anti-Jacobin, The, 255-6, 260 Apicius, 311 Ariosto, Ludovico: Orlando Furioso, 95, 173-4, 229, 276 Aristophanes, ed. Brunck, 280, 413 Aucher, Paschal (Harit’wn Avgerian): A Grammar, Armenian and English, 107 Aulus Gellius, 277 Austen, Jane: Persuasion, 142&n; Pride and Prejudice, 275 Bad Lord Byron, The, 219 Bakewell, Michael and Melissa: Augusta Leigh, Byron’s Half-Sister, a Biography, 135n Baldwin, W.J., 316 Barff, Samuel, 344 Barnes and Black, 15&n Barrington Dalby, W., 358 Barrow, Isaac: Sermons, 32, 281 Barry, Charles, 278

Barrymore, John, 219n Barton, Anne, 203 Baudelaire, Charles, 169: Spleen, 169-70 Baxter (coachmaker), 64 Bayle, Pierre, 171: Historical and Critical Dictionary, 140-1, 172 Bayly, Robert, 4&n Beaton, Roderick: Byron’s War, 340&n, 342&n Beckford, William, 72, 118: Vathek, 151, 275, 283-7 Beattie, James: Minstrel, The, 328 Beatty, Bernard, 18, 82, 84: Byron’s Don Juan, 18&n, 74n, 84, 264&n, 271-2&n Beau Brummel, 219n Beccaria, Giovanni, 160 Beckett, John: Byron and Newstead, 239n Beecher Stowe, Harriet, 268&n Bedford, Grosvenor, 23 Beltram (Beltran), Josefa, 112, 119, 231 Bentham, Jeremy, 221 Beringer, André de, 219n Bernard of Clairvaux, St, 358, 409 Berni, Francesco, 278, 330 Berri (Berry) duc de, 163 Betty, William, 290 Bible, The: Genesis, 140; I Corinthians, 50n Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, 220 Black: Life of Tasso, 174, 276 Blackbourne, Archbishop, 126, 260-1

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Blackwood, 155 Blair, James: Sermons, 281 Blessington, Countess of: Conversations of Lord Byron, 71, 93-4, 272, 314, 315n Bligh, William, Narrative, 297 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 280 Boiardo, Matteo, 278, 330 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 31, 33, 43, 44, 64, 80, 370 Bonstetten, Karl Victor von, 114&n, 348n Boone, Daniel, xii, 107 Borgia, Pope Alexander, 135 Borgia, Cesare, 135 Borgia, Lucrezia, 135 Bowles, William Lisle, 131, 167, 277, 369n Bowring, John: Specimens of the Russian Poets, 278 Boyd, Elizabeth French: Don Juan, a Critical Study, 258n Boydell’s Shakespeare, 277 Boyes, Megan: My Amiable Mamma, 243n, 244n, 290n Bride of Frankenstein, 219n Brown, John: Barbarossa, 289 Browne, Hawkins, 77 Bruce, Michael, 40, 69 Bruhm, Steven, 121n Bruno, Dr, 17 Burdett, Sir Francis, 3, 14&n, 46, 47&n, 55, 63, 69, 282 Burdett, Sophia, 55 Burdett, Susannah, 55 Butler, Samuel: Hudibras, 280 Byrne, Gabriel, 219 Byron (TV series), 221-2 Byron, Admiral “Foul Weather Jack”, 239: Narrative Byron, Allegra, 111 Byron, Annabella, Lady, 3, 7, 10, 16, 17, 45, 64, 82, 109,

110, 115, 122, 222, 248, 275, 295, 311, 351n, 352n, 360 Byron, Augusta Ada, 82 Byron Ballad of a Demon, 221, 222 Byron, Catherine Gordon, 98, 99, 105-6, 189 Byron, Captain George, 242 BYRON, George Gordon Lord Works: Age of Bronze, The, 33, 36, 64; Alpine Journal, 292; Augustus Darvell, 46; Beppo, 2, 17, 21-2, 23-4, 59, 75-6, 79, 80&n, 115, 130-1, 132, 172, 177n, 179, 183n, 210&n, 211, 213, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 223, 236, 247, 259, 283&n, 311, 318, 319, 328, 330, 361, 364; Bride of Abydos, The, 114, 125, 136-7, 138, 203, 247, 277, 286, 288, 289-90, 328; Cain, 67, 139-40, 172-3&n, 194, 267, 366n, 376; Cefalonia Journal, 93, 371, 373n; Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 21, 22n, 40, 7184, 113-15, 158, 179, 238, 252, 188, 327; Canto I, 28, 42, 114, 117, 121, 242, 250, 277; Canto II, xii, 21, 42, 91-2, 95, 102, 114, 121-2, 195, 277; Canto III, 21, 2930, 40, 115, 122, 133, 193, 218, 267, 291-2; Canto IV, 45, 115, 133, 153, 160, 162, 201, 211, 218, 253, 225-6, 230, 265, 295-6, 326; Churchill’s Grave, 203; Corsair, The, 21, 23, 36, 79, 86n, 87, 114, 125-6, 169, 174, 244, 247, 253-61; 276&n, 277, 285, 287, 291, 328, 407; Curse of Minerva,

Index The, 191; Darkness, xi, 223n, 323, 374; Deformed Transformed, The, 104, 187, 216, 279; Detached Thoughts, 108n; Devil’s Drive, The, 310; Don Juan, 328-38; Dedication: 23-4, 28; Canto I: 2n, 18, 24, 54n, 142, 151, 175, 203, 208, 210, 215, 250, 288, 297, 373n; Canto II: 43, 106, 110, 112, 153, 267, 278, 281, 297, 299, 323, 325, 326; Canto III: 24, 94, 216, 232n, 267, 277, 279, 280, 284, 288, 304, 340, 378; Canto IV: 313; Canto V: 95, 100n, 142n, 147, 148-9, 150, 152, 258, 278, 280, 288, 310, 350n; Canto VI: 25, 156, 213, 278, 288, 314, 367; Canto VII: xii, 26, 97, 108, 131, 156, 175n, 183n, 185, 306, 308, 367; Canto VIII: xii, 25, 95, 97, 156, 186, 309, 369; Canto IX: xii, 22, 268, 367, 372; Canto X: 19-20, 110, 195; Canto XI: 26, 44, 71, 217, 313; Canto XII: 156, 240; Canto XIII: 251, 310; Canto XIV: 27, 269; Canto XV: 108, 186, 212, 272, 312; Canto XVI: 187n, 212, 270-1, 273; Canto XVII: v, xii, 1, 239; English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, 41, 105, 143, 145-6, 167, 191-2, 276&n, 277, 319; Epistle to Augusta, 73, 239, 397; Fare Thee Well, 73; Giaour, The, 86, 87, 94, 114, 115, 123-6, 129, 131, 140, 144, 152, 179, 191, 213, 247, 277, 287-9, 309, 328; Golice Macbane, 192-3; Hebrew

416 Melodies, 58, 137, 277; Hints from Horace, 42, 66, 115, 129; Hours of Idleness, 143, 145, 191; Island, The, 33, 36, 64, 106, 112, 172, 188-9, 195; Lachin Y Gair, 190; Lara, 114, 125n, 127-8, 131, 174, 179, 244, 253, 259, 277, 291; Letter to John Murray, 131, 172n, 367; Irish Avatar, The, 167; Lines on Hearing that Lady Byron Was Ill, 109; Lines to a Lady Weeping, 153; London Journal, 33, 316n; Manfred, 82, 133, 139, 144, 150-3, 164-5, 184, 197-8, 200, 205, 206-7, 214n, 279, 295, 364, 377-8; Mazeppa, 45-6, 54n, 185, 229, 323-5; Marino Faliero, 19, 60, 62n, 66, 79, 177&n, 201, 216, 236-7, 279, 290; Monody on Sheridan, 59; My Boy Hobby-O, 46-8, 55; Ode from the French, 156; Ode to Napoleon Buonaparte, 43n, 153; On this day, 341; Parisina, 115, 124, 129, 130, 277, 361; Prisoner of Chillon, The, 29, 115, 165n, 184-55, 228, 323, 375, 398; Ravenna Journal, 338, 349n; Sardanapalus, 201, 204-5; Siege of Corinth, The, 19, 106, 129-30, 133, 144, 277, 285, 300, 309n, 322; She Walks in Beauty, 4n; Sketch from Private Life, A, 73; Some Observations, 52, 364; So we’ll go no more a-roving, 194; To a Young Friend, 183; To Mary, 145; Two Foscari, The, 19, 187-8, 200, 215n, 216, 236; Venice, an Ode,

417

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs xii; Vision of Judgement, The, 27, 35n, 64, 76, 79, 106, 156, 167-8, 186, 213, 266, 267, 283-4&n, 288, 299n, 320, 328-9, 332, 362; Waltz, 280; Werner, 34, 188, 214

Byron, the “Wicked” Lord, 23941 Byron, William John, 239 Cameron, Caroline, 112, 224, 232 Campbell, Thomas: Gertrude of Wyoming, xii Campbell Moore, Stephen, 222 Canaletto, Antonio, 241 Cantemir, Demetrius: the Othman Empire, 278 Caroline, Queen, 63 Castelnau, Marquis de: Histoire de la Nouvelle Russie, 304-10, 315 Casti, Giambattista, 278, 330: Gli Animale Parlante, 278; Il Poema Tartaro, 278; Novelle Galanti, 278 Catherine, Empress, xii Castlereagh, Viscount, 155 Cellarius’ Geography, 277 Cervantes, Miguel de, 19, 145, 335: Don Quixote, 338 Chalandritsanos, Loukas, 114, 222, 240-1, 341-2 Chamberlain, Richard, 219n Chandler, 158 Charlotte, Queen, 51&n Chateaubriand, René, 375 Chatterton, Thomas, 113 Chaucer, Geoffrey: Pardoner’s Tale, The, 126 Chaworth, Mary, 353 Cheeke, Stephen: Byron and Place, 285n Cheney, Dick, xii

Cicero, 280 Citizen Kane, 219 Clare, Earl of, 114 Claremont, Claire, 30n, 37&n, 110-1, 136, 219, 222, 250n Clarke, Edward Daniel, 136 Claughton, Thomas, 248 Cleopatra, 311 Clermont, Mrs, 222, 264 Cobbett, William, 47n: Parliamentary Debates, 277 Cochran, Peter: Byron and the Birth of Arimanes, 107n; Byron and Orientalism, 93; Byron’s Romantic Politics, 94n, 314n; Nature’s Gentler Errors, 103; One Ton Per Square Foot: the Antecedents of The Vision of Judgement, 328n; The Sale of Parga and The Isles of Greece, 343n; The Vision of Judgement and the Waverley Novels, 284n; Why did Byron envy Thomas Hope’s Anastasius?, 314n Cogni, Margherita, 112, 136, 234-5 Cohen, Francis, 336n Coleridge, E.H., 22, 258n, 310 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 316: Christabel, 322; Love, 322-3; Rime of the Ancient Mariner, The, 182, 298, 321-7; Remorse, 167, 292, 295 Collingwood, Admiral, 101&n Colocotronis, Theodore, 95, 97, 343, 344 Constant, Benjamin, 52 Corinth, Bey of, 95 Corman, Roger, 219n Cotton, Charles: translation of Montaigne, 278 Cowper, William, 113

Index Coxe, Archdeacon: Life of Marlborough, 277 Croker, John Wilson, 31, 320 Croly, George, 159n Crompton, Louis B: Byron and Greek Love, 121 Cumberland, Duke of, 90 Cumming, Alan, 224 Currie, Dr: Life of Burns, 280 Cyr, Miriam, 220, 221 Dacre, Charlotte, 142-55, 288: Confessions of the Nun of St. Omer, The, 151, 154; Hours of Solitude, 143-4, 153, 154; Libertine, The, 152, 154; Moorish Combat, 144-5, 152, 289 90; Passions, The, 152, 153, 154; Poor Negro Sadi, The, 157; Zofloya, 145-52, 154 Dallas, R.C., 74, 114, 115-17, 347 Dalyell, Sir John: Shipwrecks and Disasters at Sea, 278, 297-301, 315 Dangerfield, Elma, 367n Daru, Pierre, 201 Davidson, 68 Davies, Scrope Berdmore, 30n, 31, 44, 48, 50&n, 51, 57, 64, 65, 108 Davison, Mrs, 59 Dear, Nick, 222 Deardon, James, 68 Dern, Laura, 220 Devonshire, Duchess of, 352&n Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield, 171, 373 Diodorus Siculus, 201 D’Ohsson, 91, 94 Donegal, Lady, 15&n Don Leon, 56, 118 Dorchester, Lady, 55 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 170: Crime and Punishment, 375; Journal, 171-2

418 Douglass, Paul: Whole Disgraceful Truth, The, 127-8&n Dowden, Wilfred S., 1 Doyle, Colonel Francis Hastings, 4&n, 7, 8, 10, 15 Dread Poets Society, 218, 223 Drury, Henry, 120 Dryden, John, 280 Edgeworth, Maria, 142 Edinburgh Review, The, 132, 191, 260 Edleston, John, 114 Edward, 47n Eisenstein, Sergei, 305 Eisler, Benita: Byron Childe of Passion Fool of Fame, 40n Ekenhead, Mr., 43, 135 Elgin, Lord, 158 Eliot, T.S., 123, 171, 373 Elphinstone, Mercer, 100 Elwin, Malcolm: Lord Byron’s Wife, 295&n, 352n de l’Enclos, Ninon: Letters, 280 Espronceda, José de, 170 Euripides, Hippolytus, 137 Evans, R.H., 275-9 Everett, Rupert, 366-7, 377, 407 Falcieri, Tita, 344 Farino, Julian, 222 Farqhuar, George: The Beaux’ Stratagem, 12n Fielding, Emma, 224 Fielding, Henry, 27, 145, 335, 338: Amelia, 283n; Joseph Andrews, 149, 338; Tom Jones, 198, 338 Filicaija, Vincenzo da, 159-61 Finlay, George: History of Greece, 96 Fitzgerald, Maurice, 14&n Fletcher, Dexter, 224

419

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs

Fletcher, William, 222, 245n, 251, 281, 282, 341-2, 346-55 Forbes, Lady Adelaide, 159 Ford, John: ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, 136 Forresti, Spridion, 101 Forster, E.M.: Passage to India, A, 189 Forsyth, Joseph: Remarks on Antiquities … in Italy, 266 Foscolo, Ugo: Iacopo Ortis, 276&n Frankestein Unbound, 219n Frere, John Hookham: Whistlecraft, 59, 230, 330 Fry, Elizabeth, 92 Galt, John, 136n Gamba, Pietro, 184, 339, 347 Gamba, Ruggero, 339, 349 Garrick, David, 199, 290 Gay, Howard, 219n George III, 46, 267, 320, 328 George IV, 95, 368, 369-70, 378 Georgiu, Eustathios, 114 Géricault, Theodore, 297 Gibbon, Edward, 20, 80-1: Decline and Fall, 20, 83&n Gifford, William, 2, 6, 23, 28-33, 98, 122, 162, 166, 249, 267 Giraud, Niccolò, 114 Godwin, William, 297, 316: Caleb Williams, 295 Goethe, 376, 389: Faust, 376 Goldoni, Carlo: Memoirs, 174 Goldsmith, Oliver: Vicar of Wakefield, The, 339&n Golitsin, A.S., xi Gordon, Gavin, 219n Gothic, 219-20, 220n Graham, Malcolm, 219n Granger, Stewart, 219n Grant, Hugh, 220-1, 223n Grattan, Henry, 13, 14n Gray, May, 191

Gray, Thomas, 114, 290, 348&n Greenwood, Joan, 219 Grey de Ruthyn, Lord, 352 Gross, Jonathan David, 121&n Grosskurth, Phyllis: Byron, the Flawed Angel, 181 Groves, Beatrice, 142n Guiccioli, Alessandro, 184, 348&n Guiccioli, Teresa, 98-9, 112, 136, 183, 195&n, 202, 219, 232, 238, 272, 340, 349&n Gunn, Peter: My Dearest Augusta, 135n Gvelesiani, Anzor, xii-xiii Handel, Messiah, 50n Hanson, John, 54, 64, 65, 67, 98, 240, 241&n, 242, 244, 247, 249&n, 250n, 278, 279, 359 Hardy, Thomas: The Mayor of Casterbridge, 248 Hare Naylor, Francis: History of Germany, 277 Harley, Lady Charlotte, 119 Harness, William, 114 Hasleden, W.S., 241 Haunted Summer, 219-20 Hawkins, Sally, 222n Haye, Lady Julia Tomlinson, 55 Hazlitt, William, 200 Heine, Heinrich, 374-5: Deutschland ein Wintermärchen, 376; Lorelei, Die, 376 Henley, Samuel: notes to Vathek, 275, 287-9 Hemans. Felicia, 154-63: Dartmoor, 167; Lays of Many Lands, 162; Modern Greece, 157, 158-9; Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy, The, 155 -9; Sceptic, The, 162-4; Stanzas to the Memory of the Late King, 162; Tales

Index and Historic Scenes, 162; Translations from Camoens, 161-2 d’Herbelot, Barthelemy, 286 Higashinaka, Itsuyo, 149 Hilton, Boyd, 51n Hitler, Adolf, 377 Hobhouse, Benjamin, 38 Hobhouse, Byron, 359 Hobhouse, Charlotte, 55 Hobhouse, Sir John, 15 Hobhouse, John Cam: 1-17, 22, 23, 31-3, 37-56, 57, 58n, 59, 61, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 72, 74, 79, 83, 84, 90, 101, 102, 110, 113, 114n, 120-1, 128, 143, 158, 160, 222, 224, 225-9, 230, 232, 233, 238, 242-3, 253, 275, 277-9, 281-2, 289, 292, 301, 315, 326, 335n, 343, 347, 348, 356; Exposure of the MisStatements contained in Captain Medwin’s pretended “Conversations of Lord Byron”, 347; Historical Illustrations to the Fourth Canto of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 40; Italy, 56; Journey Through Albania, A, 42, 84; Recollections of a Long Life, 9n, 12n, 16n, 22, 55, 351n; Substance of Some Letters from Paris, The, 31, 32n, 122; Travels in Albania, 56; Trifling Mistake, A, 46, 63 Hobhouse, Julia, see Dorchester Hobhouse, Sophia, 55 Hodgson, Francis, 114, 122, 247 Hogg, James, 198n Holbein, Hans, 241 Holinshed, Raphael, 283 Holland, Dr., 100, 158 Holland, Lord, 2, 288-9, 316

420 Homer: ed. Heyne, 280; Odyssey, The, 212, 328 Hope, Thomas: Anastasius, 90, 278, 313-17, 339 Hoppner, R.B., 111, 317 Hopps, Gavin, 40n, 87n, 269n, 326n, 419n Horace: Ars Poetica, 42, 191; Epistles, 49&n; Odes, 85, 277, 330, 332 Horton, Wilmot, 3, 4&n, 5, 6, 7, 10, 15 Hunt, Henry “Orator”, 47&n Hunt, John, 35-6, 202 Hurley, Liz, 221 Huysmans, Charles: À Rebours, 169 Ibbetson, 5 Inchbald, Elizabeth, 142 Ireland, Dr, 68 Irving, Washington, 250 James II, 90 Jeffrey, Francis, 191, 194 Jennings, Alex, 225 Johnson, Samuel, 198 Johnstone, Sir Alexander, 48&n Jones, Sir William, 286 Jonson, Ben: Alchemist, The, 138 Joseph, M.K.: Byron the Poet, 130 Joyce, James, 171: Ulysses, 171 Juvenal, 331 Kafka, Franz: Trial, The, 182&n Karvellas brothers, 160 Kean, Edmund, 59, 60, 61, 200 Keats, John 223: Endymion, 320 Keates: Pellew Islands, 277 Kelsall, Malcolm: Byron and the Ottoman Empire, 89-97 Kemble, John Philip, 199 Kennedy, James, 281n Keppel, Maria, 57, 59

421

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs

Kimber, Jill, 364n Kinnaird, Douglas, 2, 5&n, 6, 8, 33, 34, 40, 55, 57-70; 115, 229, 230, 234, 282, 340 Kinnaird, Lord, 57, 59, 69, 70, 229 Kinski, Klaus, 221 Knolles: History of the Turks, 280 Kotzebue, August, 163 Koundouros, Nikos, 221 Krige, Alice, 220, 383, 384 Lady Caroline Lamb, 218n Lafitte, Jean, 126, 260 Lamartine, Alphonse de, 375-6 Lamb, Caroline: 2, 40, 44, 112, 1278, 133, 142, 219, 222, 232, 243, 247, 294, 311; Glenarvon, 142 Lambton, John, 4&n Lang, Cecil Y.: Narcissus Jilted, 83, 103 Langley Moore, Doris, 52n: Lord Byron Accounts Rendered, 244n, 318n, 342; The Late Lord Byron, 2n, 3n, 7n, 9n, 16n, 230 Lansdowne, Lord, 4 Lapinski, Piya-Pal, 40n Last Rose of Summer, The, 219n Lauderdale, Lord, 54, 55, 233 Laurence: translation of The Book of Enoch, 279 Laven, David, 233n, 235 Lawrence of Arabia, 89&n Lawrence, T.E., 90 Leake, William Martin, 82, 83n, 99, 101, 102, 105 Lean, David, 89 Lear, Edward: Dong with the Luminous Nose, The, 185 Lee, Harriet: German’s Tale, The, 215 Leigh, Augusta, 4n, 6, 8, 9n, 10, 58, 67n, 68, 69, 85, 108,

114, 122, 133-6, 140, 222, 232, 239, 244, 276, 346, 358 Leigh, Medora, 140 Leigh Hunt, James Henry, 33-6, 113-14 Lemprière: Universal Biography, 280 Leon to Annabella, 56 Lermontov, Mikhail, 169-70, 368, 374: Hero of Our Time, A, 168, 179, 374 Le Sage, Alain René: Diable Boiteux, Le, 280; Gil Blas, 175, 177-8, 297, 314, 337 Levine, Alice, 103n, 121 Lewis, Matthew “Monk”, 59, 226 Liberal, The, 33-6, 64 Little, Chris, 12n Literary Gazette, The, 258n Liverpool, Lord, 242, 368 Lloyd-Jones, Ralph, 244n, 346 Longinus, 331 Longmans, 3, 6, 12 Louvel, Louis Pierre, 163 Lucian, 335 Lucretius, 331 Lucullus, 312 Luhrman, Baz: William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet, 131 Lushington, Dr, 45, 352n Luttrell, Henry, 4&n, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 Macdonald, David, 219 Machiavelli, Niccolò, 174, 276, 319 Macker, Keric, 39 Macri, Mrs, 231 Manutius, Aldus, 277 Marandi, Seyed Mohammed: The Concubine of Abydos; Byron’s Infidel and the Muslim Fisherman, 128n

Index Marchand, Leslie, 44, 264, 409 Martial, 18, 331 Masson: Court of St Petersburg, 279 Matter of Life and Death, A, 219 Massinger, Philip: New Way to Pay Old Debts, A, 26 Matthews, C.S., 69, 72, 74, 113, 117, 118-19 Mavrocordatos, Alexander, 97, 343, 344 Maxwell, Sir Murray, 50 McDayter, Ghislaine: Byromania and the Birth of Celebrity Culture, 856, 126-7, 254 McFarland, Thomas: Romantic Cruxes, 113 McGann, Jerome J., 22, 23n, 84, 91, 121, 136n, 143, 207n, 253, 386, 409&n: Don Juan in Context, 253n Mealey, Owen, 245n Medwin, Thomas, 28, 264, 291-2, 329, 339, 346-55: Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, The, 154n Mehmed II, 89 Melbourne, Lady, 55, 136, 183, 222, 249-50 Mellor, David: Was Byron’s Terminal Illness a form of Neuro-Syphilis? 340n Milbanke, Sir Ralph, 249 Miller, Jonny Lee, 222 Millingen, Julius, 17, 268 Milton, John, 114, 326: Prose Works, 280 Mitford, William: History of Greece, 90, 158 Mole, Tom: Byron’s Romantic Celebrity Industrial Culture and the Hermeneutic of Intimacy, 72n, 117, 119 Molière: Dom Juan, 329

422 Molina, Tirso de: Don Juan Tenorio, 329 Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 95, 142 Montaigne, Michel de, 234, 278, 335-7&n Moore, Edward, 14&n Moore, Olivia Byron, 357 Moore, Thomas: 1-17, 19, 30, 34, 49, 50, 57, 69, 153-4, 184, 191, 231, 248, 259-60, 264, 338, 350, 359, 364; Life of Byron, 16, 52&n, 317, 351; Loves of the Angels, The, 34 Montesquieu, Charles-Louis, 280 Morland, Sir F.B., 63 Morning Chronicle, The, 15n Morning Post, The, 49, 54, 153, 165 Morritt, J.B.S., 78n Mozart: Don Giovanni, 234, 329 Muratori: Cronica di Sanuto, 201, 279; Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, 201 Murray, Joe, 246&n, 251 Murray, John II, 1, 3, 6, 10, 11, 22, 23, 29, 30, 58, 64, 65, 114, 115, 122, 128, 154, 199, 272n, 275, 278, 282, 285, 286, 289, 301, 305, 314, 315, 316, 317, 346, 355&n, 366, 368, 405 Murray, John III, 1, 56 de Musset, Alfred, 168-70, 373: Caprices de Marianne, Les, 283; Rolla, 168 Nadir Shah, 19, 20 Nathan, Isaac, 58, 137 New Monthly Magazine, The, 278, 291-302 Newport, Sir J., 14&n Newstead Byron Society Review, The, x, xii, 1, 142, 169, 181, 190, 253, 275, 346, 382,

423

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs

389, 392, 403, 406, 408 Nicholson, Andrew, 143 Nicolson, Harold: Byron, The Last Journey, 343n, 344n Nietzsche, Friedrich: Also Sprach Zarathustra, 377 Noel, Lady, 68 Noel, Rev., 45 O’Neill, Michael, 84 Ossian, 144 O’Toole, Peter, 89 Otto of Bavaria, Prince, 340 Otway, Thomas: Venice Preserv’d, 201n, 296; Works, 280 Ovid, 18, 143: Metamorphoses, 331, 333, 334 Oxford, Lady, 112, 224, 232, 353n Parry, William, 221, 340n, 344 Parsons, 38 Passer, Ivan, 219 Patric, Jason, 219n Pausanias, Description of Greece, tr. Taylor, 279 Peacock, Thomas Love: Nightmare Abbey, 78-9 Petrarch, 276, 280 Petronius: Satyricon, The, 113n, 312n Phipps, 13&n Pickersgill: Three Brothers, 279 Pindar, ed. Heyne, 280 Pinto, Luigi dal, 350&n Place, Francis, 55 Plutarch, 37 Poe, Edgar Allan, xi Pole, Wellesley, 101&n Polidori, John William, 220, 221, 223, 348 Poole, Gabriele, 139-40, 160 Pope, Alexander, 73n, 114, 131, 172, 277, 326 Portsmouth, Earl of, 359

Potemkin, Grigory, xii, 19, 20, 304, 311, 338, 367 Potter, 158 Pouqueville, 83n, 158 Praz, Mario, 113, 134 Price, Dennis, 219 Prince of Lovers, 219n Prothero, R.E., 55, 347n Pulci, Luigi, 33, 66, 95, 330, 335: Il Morgante Maggiore, 95, 174 Pushkin, Alexander, 168-9: Evgeny Onegin, 168, 368, 374-5 Putin, Vladimir, xii, 304 Quarterly Review, The, 31, 77 Qur’an, The, 25n, 94 Rabelais, François, 27 Radcliffe, Ann, 128: Mysteries of Udolpho, The, 295-6; Romance of the Forest, 153n Raizis, Byron: Childe Harold’s Offspring, English and American, 158n Rancliffe, Lord, 2 Rapp the Harmonist, xii, 108 Règle du Jeu, La, 283 Rejected Addresses, The, 280 Ricci: L’Italiade, 277 Rice, Spring, 13&n Richelieu, Duc de, 304-5, 308n Rochefoucauld: Maxims, 280 Rogers, Samuel, 3, 4n, 5, 11, 69, 291 Romilly, Sir Samuel, 53n Rood, Anne, 351n “Rosalie”, 87-9 Rougement, Pictet de, 348n Rousseau, Jean-Jacques: Contrat Sociale, Le, 81; Julie, ou la Nouvelle Eloïse, 81 Rowing with the Wind, 219, 220

Index Rubens, Peter Paul, 241 Rudolf, Anthony, xi Rushton, Robert, 122-3, 224, 245n, 247 Russell, Ken, 219-20, 223 Russell, Lord John, 1, 2, 15 Sade, Marquis de, 38, 39, 40: Justine, 38, 39, 40 Sale, George: translation of the Qur’an, The, 25n, 94 Sand, George, 373: L’Uscoque, 125n Sandt (Sand?) Karl Ludwig, 163 Sappho, 331 Saracci, Spiro, 245n Savigny and Corréard: Narrative of a Voyage to Senegal, 297 Schiller, Friedrich von, 136: Bride Of Messina, The 136n; Don Karlos, 136&n-7; Geisterseher, Der, 296 Schopenhauer, Arthur: Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, Die, 377 Scolia Græca ed. Brunck, 280 Scott, Walter, 77-8, 82, 280, 284, 322, 342, 364, 374, 382: Antiquary, The, 136, 137, 283; Bride of Lammermuir, The, 283; Guy Mannering, 283; Heart of Midlothian, The, 170, 194, 373; Ivanhoe, 283; Lay of the Last Minstrel, The, 276, 328; Marmion, 276, 328; Monastery The, 283; Old Mortality, 283; Rob Roy, 283; Tales of my Landlord, 167, 226; Waverley, 192, 196 Segati, Marianna, 24, 37, 112, 136, 224, 229, 231-34, 273, 375

424 Shadwell, Thomas: Libertine, The, 152, 329 Shakespeare, William, 19, 62,113 114, 197-207, 374: As You Like It, 127, 212, 361; Coriolanus, 125, 175, 196, 198, 199, 361, 368n; Cymbeline, 361; Hamlet, 17, 198, 211, 290, 306, 359-60, 361, 362, 364; Henry IV I, 92n, 175-6, 202, 315n; Henry IV II 176; Julius Caesar, 361; King Lear, 42n, 113, 198, 323, 338, 344n; Macbeth, 19, 175, 195, 198, 201, 204-6, 289, 309, 361, 365; Merchant of Venice, The, 8, 11, 6n, 200, 212, 295, 368n; Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 208; Midsummer Night’s Dream, A, 202n; Much Ado About Nothing, 202n, 214, 361; Othello, 49&n, 201, 210-11, 233, 296, 309, 328; Phoenix and the Turtle, The, 323; Richard II, 200, 204, 206; Richard III, 105, 290; Romeo and Juliet, 130, 131, 211; Sonnet 111, 217, Sonnet 144, 122, 246; Taming of the Shrew, The, 209n, 361; Tempest, The, 202, 211, 361; Twelfth Night, 127, 213, 214; Winter’s Tale, The, 111, 199, 361 Sharif, Omar, 89n Shears, Jonathon: Byron’s Aposiopesis, 215n Shelley, Mary, 30n, 64, 219, 220, 222, 224, 250n: Frankenstein, 142, 151 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 28, 29, 30, 64, 72, 122, 132, 154, 219, 220, 223, 224, 250n,

425

The Burning of Byron’s Memoirs

265, 278, 292, 293, 319, 320, 321, 329: Adonais, 320; Alastor, 264, 284; Prometheus Unbound, 277 Sheridan, Richard Brindsley: The Critic, 175, 176 Sismondi: de la Littérature du Midi, 174, 276 Sligo, Marquis of, 102 Smith, James and Horace: Cui Bono? 76-7 Smollett, Tobias, 19, 20, 27, 145, 327: Humphrey Clinker, 177n; Peregrine Pickle, 20; Roderick Random, 283, 335, 337, 338 Sophocles: Antigone, 133; Oedipus the King, 137 Sotheby (auctioneer), 275 Sotheby, William, 23, 24, 318: translation of Wieland’s Oberon, 125, 257 Spall, Timothy, 220, 223 Spencer Smith, Constance, 120, 231 Spenser, Edmund: Faerie Queene, The: 328 Sourgen, Gavin, 89n South, Robert: Sermons, 281 Southey, Robert, 19, 24, 28, 32, 121, 185, 217, 233, 249n, 317, 319-21, 326, 364, 368, 406-7: Joan of Arc, 407; Poet’s Pilgrimage to Waterloo, The, 218, 280; Roderick, Last of the Goths, 407; Thalaba the Destroyer, 277, 284; Vision of Judgement, A, 318, 328 Stabler, Jane: Byron Studies, 121n Staël, Germaine de, 160, 161, 228, 335: Corinne,143, 227, 276&n

St.Clair, William, 154: That Greece Might Still Be Free, 95-6 Saint-Claire, Captain, 39 Stanhope, Hester, Lady, 342 Stanhope, Leicester, 221 Stendhal (Henri Beyle), 39: Le Rouge et le Noir, 375 Sterne, Laurence, 27: Tristram Shandy, 138&n, 153n, 234, 306, 335, 334, 337 Stevenson, Warren, 323, 325 Stoltz, Eric, 220 Stoppard, Tom: Arcadia, 244n Suarez, Gonzalo, 219 Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 263 Swift, Jonathan, 19: Works ed. Scott, 280 Swynford Paddocks, 140n Tahiri, Dervise, 354&n Taruscelli, Arpalice, 61&n, 235 Tasso, Torquato: Gerusalemme Liberata, 95, 173-4, 276 Taylor, Henry, 291 Taylor, Thomas, 279 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 373 Tessier, Thérèse, Lord Byron, A Multidisciplinary Open Forum, 158n Thistlewood, Arthur, 163 Thomson, James, 198: Castle of Indolence, The, 328 Thornton, Thomas: Present State of Turkey, The: 94 Throsby, Corin, 87 Tillotson, John: Works, 281 Times, The, 15n Titian, 241 Todd, Rev. John, 366n Tolstoy, Leo: Anna Karenina, 375; War and Peace, 375 de Tott, Baron: Memoirs, 278 Trelawny, Edward John, 349 Tully, Miss (??): A Narrative of Ten Years’ Residence at

Index Tripoli in Africa, 94, 279, 302-5 Turgenev, Ivan, xi Turner, Sharon, 11&n Tweeddale, Marquis of, 55 Ude, Louis Eustache: The French Cook, 279, 310-113 Universal Magazine, The, 258n Uxbridge, Earl of, 250 Vaill, Jeffery, 1 Vakousis, Manos, 221 Van Dyke, Anthony, 241 Vaughan, Susan, 122-3, 244-7, 358 Vaulbert de Chantilly, Marc: Robert Harding Evans of Pall Mall, 279 Veli Pasha, 102 Verdi, Giuseppe: Il Corsaro, I Due Foscari, 377 Vincent, E.R.: Byron. Hobhouse and Foscolo, 49n Virgil, 331: Aeneid, The, 264n Voltaire, 80-1, 171, 172, 237, 278, 280-1: Candide, 100, 263n Wagner, Adolf, 377 Wagner, Richard: Ring des Niebelungen, Der, 377 Walpole, Sir Robert, 47&n Warburton, William, 290 Warsi, Baroness, 112n Wasserman, Jack, 52n Watts, Alaric, 258n

426 Webb, Timothy, 84 Webster, John: Duchess of Malfi, The, 136n Wedderburn Webster, Frances, 138, 359 Wedderburn Webster, James, 138, 177n, 359 Wellington, Duke of, 54, 155, 156, 277, 370-1 Whale, James, 219n Whitbread, Samuel, 59, 370 Wieland, Christoph: Oberon, 125, 290, 259 Wildman, Colonel Thomas, 250 Willman, Noel, 219n Wilson, Andy, 223 Winter, Alex, 220 Wolfson, Susan, 154 Wollstonecraft, Mary, xii Wordsworth, William, 19, 166, 292, 376: Peter Bell, 284; Tintern Abbey, 293 Wright, Waller Rodwell: Horæ Ionicæ, 328 Wroughton, Richard, 200 Wu, Duncan: Romantic Women Poets, 155n Yeats, W.B., 171: Don Juan in Hell, 379; Tower, The, 181 Zambelli, Lega: Papers, 317, 280n, 318&n, 341 Zephaniah, Benjamin, 223 Zetterling, Mai, 219