Byron: The Last Phase

In speaking of his sister, shortly before his departure for Greece, Byron maintained that he owed the little good which he could boast, to her influence over his wayward nature. He regretted that he had not known her earlier, as it might have influenced his destiny.

‘To me she was, in the hour of need, as a tower of strength. Her affection was my last rallying point, and is now the only bright spot that the horizon of England offers to my view.’ ‘Augusta,’ said Byron, ‘knew all my weaknesses, but she had love enough to bear with them. She has given me such good advice, and yet, finding me incapable of following it, loved and pitied me the more, because I was erring. This is true affection, and, above all, true Christian feeling.’

But we should not be writing about Byron and his foibles eighty-four years after his death, if he had not been wholly different to other men in his views of life. Shortly after his marriage, for no sufficient, or at least for no apparent reason, Byron chose to immolate himself, and took a sort of Tarpeian leap, passing the remainder of his existence in bemoaning his bruises, and reviling the spectators who were not responsible for his fall. One of the main results of this conduct was his separation from his child, for whom he seems to have felt the deepest affection. We find him, at the close of his life, constantly speaking of Ada, ‘sole daughter of his heart and house,’ and prophesying the advent of a love whose consolations he could never feel.

‘I often, in imagination, pass over a long lapse of years,’ said Byron, ‘and console myself for present privations, in anticipating the time when my daughter will know me by reading my works; for, though the hand of prejudice may conceal my portrait from her eyes,9 it cannot hereafter conceal my thoughts and feelings, which will talk to her when he to whom they belonged has ceased to exist. The triumph will then be mine; and the tears that my child will drop over expressions wrung from me by mental agony – the certainty that she will enter into the sentiments which dictated the various allusions to her and to myself in my works – consoles me in many a gloomy hour.’

This prophecy was amply fulfilled. It appears that, after Ada’s marriage to Lord King, Colonel Wildman met her in London, and invited her to pay him a visit at Newstead Abbey. One morning, while Ada was in the library, Colonel Wildman took down a book of poems. Ada asked the name of the author of these poems, and when shown the portrait of her father – Phillips’s well-known portrait – which hung upon the wall, Ada remained for a moment spell-bound, and then remarked ingenuously: ‘Please do not think that it is affectation on my part when I declare to you that I have been brought up in complete ignorance of all that concerns my father.’ Never until that moment had Ada seen the handwriting of her father, and, as we know, even his portrait had been hidden from her. When Byron’s genius was revealed to his daughter, an enthusiasm for his memory filled her soul. She shut herself up for hours in the rooms which Byron had used, absorbed in all the glory of one whose tenderness for her had been so sedulously concealed by her mother. On her death-bed she dictated a letter to Colonel Wildman, begging that she might be buried at Hucknall-Torkard, in the same vault as her illustrious father. And there they sleep the long sleep side by side – separated during life, united in death – the prophecy of 1816 fulfilled in 1852:

‘Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught,I know that thou wilt love me; though my nameShould be shut from thee, as a spell still fraughtWith desolation, and a broken claim:Though the grave closed between us, – ’twere the same,I know that thou wilt love me; though to drainMy blood from out thy being were an aimAnd an attainment, – all would be in vain, —Still thou wouldst love me, still that more than life retain.’

CHAPTER V

There is no doubt that Byron had a craving for celebrity in one form or another. In the last year of his life his thoughts turned with something like apathy from the fame which his pen had brought him10 towards that wider and nobler fame which might be attained by the sword. In the spirit of an exalted poet who has lately passed from us, if such prescience were possible, Byron might have applied these stirring lines to himself:

‘Up, then, and act! Rise up and undertakeThe duties of to-day. Thy courage wake!Spend not life’s strength in idleness, for lifeShould not be wasted in Care’s useless strife.No slothful doubt let work’s place occupy,But labour! Labour for posterity!‘Up, then, and sing! Rise up and bare the swordWith which to combat suffering and wrong.Console all those that suffer with thy word,Defend Man’s heritage with sword and song!Combat intrigue, injustice, tyranny,And in thine efforts God will be with thee.’

‘I have made as many sacrifices to liberty,’ said Byron, ‘as most people of my age; and the one I am about to undertake is not the least, though probably it will be the last; for with my broken health, and the chances of war, Greece will most likely terminate my career. I like Italy, its climate, its customs, and, above all, its freedom from cant of every kind; therefore it is no slight sacrifice of comfort to give up the tranquil life I lead here, and break through the ties I have formed, to engage in a cause, for the successful result of which I have no very sanguine hopes. I have a presentiment that I shall die in Greece. I hope it may be in action, for that would be a good finish to a very triste existence, and I have a horror of death-bed scenes; but as I have not been famous for my luck in life, most probably I shall not have more in the manner of my death.’

It was towards the close of May, 1823, that Byron received a letter telling him that he had been elected a member of the Committee which sat in London to further the Greek cause. Byron willingly accepted the appointment, and from that moment turned his thoughts towards Greece, without exactly knowing in what manner he could best serve her cause. He experienced alternations of confidence and despondency certainly, but he never abandoned the notion that he might be of use, if only he could see his way clearly through the conflicting opinions and advice which reached him from all sides.

The presentiment that he would end his days in Greece, weighed so heavily on his mind, that he felt a most intense desire to revisit his native country before finally throwing in his lot with the Greeks. He seems to have vaguely felt that all chances of reconciliation with Lady Byron were not dead. He would have liked to say farewell to her without bitterness, and he longed to embrace his child. But the objections to a return to England were so formidable that he was compelled to abandon the idea. His proud nature could not face the chance of a cold reception, and a revival of that roar of calumny which had driven him from our shores. He told Lady Blessington that he could laugh at those attacks with the sea between him and his traducers; but that on the spot, and feeling the effect which each libel produced upon the minds of his too sensitive friends, he could not stand the strain. Byron felt sure that his enemies would misinterpret his motives, and that no good would come of it.

After Byron had made up his mind to visit Greece in person, he does not appear ever to have seriously thought of drawing back. On June 15, 1823, he informed Trelawny, who was at Rome, that he was determined to go to Greece, and asked him to join the expedition. Seven days later Byron had hired a vessel to transport himself, his companions, his servants, and his horses, to Cephalonia.

On July 13, Byron, with Edward Trelawny, Count Pietro Gamba, and a young medical student,11 with eight servants, embarked at Genoa on the English brig Hercules, commanded by Captain Scott. At the last moment a passage was offered to a Greek named Schilitzy, and to Mr. Hamilton Browne. Gamba tells us that five horses were shipped, besides arms, ammunition, and two one-pounder guns which had belonged to The Bolivar. Byron carried with him 10,000 Spanish dollars in ready-money, with bills of exchange for 40,000 more.

Passing within sight of Elba, Corsica, the Lipari Islands (including Stromboli,) Sicily, Italy, etc., on August 2, the Hercules lay between Zante and Cephalonia; and the next day she cast anchor in Argostoli, the principal port of Cephalonia. The Resident, Colonel Napier, was at that time absent from the island. Shortly after Byron’s arrival, Captain Kennedy, Colonel Napier’s secretary, came on board, and informed him that little was known of the internal affairs of Greece. The Turks appeared to have been in force at sea, while the Greeks remained inactive at Hydra, Spezia, and Ipsara. It was supposed that Mr. Blaquière had gone to Corfu, while the famous Marco Botzari, to whom Byron had been especially recommended, was at Missolonghi. Before taking any definite step, Byron judged it best to send messengers to Corfu and Missolonghi, to collect information as to the state of affairs in the Morea. To pass the time, Byron and some of his companions made an excursion to Ithaca. The first opportunity of showing his sympathy towards the victims of barbarism and tyranny occurred at this period. Many poor families had taken refuge at Ithaca, from Scio, Patras, and other parts of Greece. Byron handed 3,000 piastres to the Commandant for their relief, and transported a family, in absolute poverty, to Cephalonia, where he provided them with a house and gave them a monthly allowance.

The following narrative, written by a gentleman who was travelling in Ithaca at that time, seems to be worthy of reproduction in these pages:

‘It was in the island of Ithaca, in the month of August, 1823, that I was shown into the dining-room of the Resident Governor, where Lord Byron, Count Gamba, Dr. Bruno, Mr. Trelawny, and Mr. Hamilton Browne, were seated after dinner, with some of the English officers and principal inhabitants of the place. I had been informed of Lord Byron’s presence, but had no means of finding him out, except by recollection of his portraits; and I am not ashamed to confess that I was puzzled, in my examination of the various countenances before me, where to fix upon “the man.” I at one time almost settled upon Trelawny, from the interest which he seemed to take in the schooner in which I had just arrived; but on ascending to the drawing-room I was most agreeably undeceived by finding myself close to the side of the great object of my curiosity, and engaged in easy conversation with him, without presentation or introduction of any kind.

‘He was handling and remarking upon the books in some small open shelves, and fairly spoke to me in such a manner that not to have replied would have been boorish. “‘Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey’ – hum! – that is well placed here, undoubtedly; ‘Hume’s Essays,’ – ‘Tales of my Landlord;’ there you are, Watty! Are you recently from England, sir?” I answered that I had not been there for two years. “Then you can bring us no news of the Greek Committee? Here we are all waiting orders, and no orders seem likely to come. Ha! ha!” “I have not changed my opinion of the Greeks,” he said. “I know them as well as most people” (a favourite phrase), “but we must not look always too closely at the men who are to benefit by our exertions in a good cause, or God knows we shall seldom do much good in this world. There is Trelawny thinks he has fallen in with an angel in Prince Mavrocordato, and little Bruno would willingly sacrifice his life for the cause, as he calls it. I must say he has shown some sincerity in his devotion, in consenting to join it for the little matter he makes of me.” I ventured to say that, in all probability, the being joined with him in any cause was inducement enough for any man of moderate pretensions. He noticed the compliment only by an indifferent smile. “I find but one opinion,” he continued, “among all people whom I have met since I came here, that no good is to be done for these rascally Greeks; that I am sure to be deceived, disgusted, and all the rest of it. It may be so; but it is chiefly to satisfy myself upon these very points that I am going. I go prepared for anything, expecting a deal of roguery and imposition, but hoping to do some good.”

‘“Have you read any of the late publications on Greece?” I asked.

‘“I never read any accounts of a country to which I can myself go,” said he. “The Committee have sent me some of their ‘Crown and Anchor’ reports, but I can make nothing of them.”

‘The conversation continued in the same familiar flow. To my increased amazement, he led it to his works, to Lady Byron, and to his daughter. The former was suggested by a volume of “Childe Harold” which was on the table; it was the ugly square little German edition, and I made free to characterize it as execrable. He turned over the leaves, and said:

‘Yes, it was very bad; but it was better than one that he had seen in French prose in Switzerland. “I know not what my friend Mr. Murray will say to it all. Kinnaird writes to me that he is wroth about many things; let them do what they like with the book – they have been abusive enough of the author. The Quarterly is trying to make amends, however, and Blackwood’s people will suffer none to attack me but themselves. Milman was, I believe, at the bottom of the personalities, but they all sink before an American reviewer, who describes me as a kind of fiend, and says that the deformities of my mind are only to be equalled by those of my body; it is well that anyone can see them, at least.” Our hostess, Mrs. Knox, advanced to us about this moment, and his lordship continued, smiling: “Does not your Gordon blood rise at such abuse of a clansman? The gallant Gordons ‘bruik nae slight.’ Are you true to your name, Mrs. Knox?” The lady was loud in her reprobation of the atrocious abuse that had recently been heaped upon the noble lord, and joined in his assumed clannish regard for their mutual name. “Lady Byron and you would agree,” he said, laughing, “though I could not, you are thinking; you may say so, I assure you. I dare say it will turn out that I have been terribly in the wrong, but I always want to know what I did.” I had not courage to touch upon this delicate topic, and Mrs. Knox seemed to wish it passed over till a less public occasion. He spoke of Ada exactly as any parent might have done of a beloved absent child, and betrayed not the slightest confusion, or consciousness of a sore subject, throughout the whole conversation.

‘I now learnt from him that he had arrived in the island from Cephalonia only that morning, and that it was his purpose (as it was mine) to visit its antiquities and localities. A ride to the Fountain of Arethusa had been planned for the next day, and I had the happiness of being invited to join it. Pope’s “Homer” was taken up for a description of the place, and it led to the following remarks:

“Yes, the very best translation that ever was, or ever will be; there is nothing like it in the world, be assured. It is quite delightful to find Pope’s character coming round again; I forgive Gifford everything for that. Puritan as he is, he has too much good sense not to know that, even if all the lies about Pope were truths, his character is one of the best among literary men. There is nobody now like him, except Watty,12 and he is as nearly faultless as ever human being was.”

‘The remainder of the evening was passed in arranging the plan of proceeding on the morrow’s excursion, in the course of which his lordship occasionally interjected a facetious remark of some general nature; but in such fascinating tones, and with such a degree of amiability and familiarity, that, of all the libels of which I well knew the public press to be guilty, that of describing Lord Byron as inaccessible, morose, and repulsive in manner and language, seemed to me the most false and atrocious. I found I was to be accommodated for the night under the same roof with his lordship, and I retired, satisfied in my own mind that favouring chance had that day made me the intimate (almost confidential) friend of the greatest literary man of modern times.

‘The next morning, about nine o’clock, the party for the Fountain of Arethusa assembled in the parlour of Captain Knox; but Lord Byron was missing. Trelawny, who had slept in the room adjoining his lordship’s, told us that he feared he had been ill during the night, but that he had gone out in a boat very early in the morning. At this moment I happened to be standing at the window, and saw the object of our anxiety in the act of landing on the beach, about ten or a dozen yards from the house, to which he walked slowly up. I never saw and could not conceive the possibility of such a change in the appearance of a human being as had taken place since the previous night. He looked like a man under sentence of death, or returning from the funeral of all that he held dear on earth. His person seemed shrunk, his face was pale, and his eyes languid and fixed on the ground. He was leaning upon a stick, and had changed his dark camlet-caped surtout of the preceding evening for a nankeen jacket embroidered like a hussar’s – an attempt at dandyism, or dash, to which the look and demeanour of the wearer formed a sad contrast. On entering the room, his lordship made the usual salutations; and, after some preliminary arrangements, the party moved off, on horses and mules, to the place of destination for the day.

‘I was so struck with the difference of appearance in Lord Byron that the determination to which I had come, to try to monopolize him, if possible, to myself, without regard to appearances or bienséance, almost entirely gave way under the terror of a freezing repulse. I advanced to him under the influence of this feeling, but I had scarcely received his answer when all uneasiness about my reception vanished, and I stuck as close to him as the road permitted our animals to go. His voice sounded timidly and quiveringly at first; but as the conversation proceeded, it became steady and firm. The beautiful country in which we were travelling naturally formed a prominent topic, as well as the character of the people and of the Government. Of the latter, I found him (to my amazement) an admirer. “There is a deal of fine stuff about that old Maitland,” he said; “he knows the Greeks well. Do you know if it be true that he ordered one of their brigs to be blown out of the water if she stayed ten minutes longer in Corfu Roads?” I happened to know, and told him that it was true. “Well, of all follies, that of daring to say what one cannot dare to do is the least to be pitied. Do you think Sir Tom would have really executed his threat?” I told his lordship that I believed he certainly would, and that this knowledge of his being in earnest in everything he said was the cause, not only of the quiet termination of that affair, but of the order and subordination in the whole of the countries under his government.

‘The conversation again insensibly reverted to Sir Walter Scott, and Lord Byron repeated to me the anecdote of the interview in Murray’s shop, as conclusive evidence of his being the author of the “Waverley Novels.” He was a little but not durably staggered by the equally well-known anecdote of Sir Walter having, with some solemnity, denied the authorship to Mr. Wilson Croker, in the presence of George IV., the Duke of York, and the late Lord Canterbury. He agreed that an author wishing to conceal his authorship had a right to give any answer whatever that succeeded in convincing an inquirer that he was wrong in his suppositions.

‘When we came within sight of the object of our excursion, there happened to be an old shepherd in the act of coming down from the fountain. His lordship at once fixed upon him for Eumæus, and invited him back with us to “fill up the picture.” Having drunk of the fountain, and eaten of our less classical repast of cold fowls, etc., his lordship again became lively, and full of pleasant conceits. To detail the conversation (which was general and varied as the individuals that partook of it) is now impossible, and certainly not desirable if it were possible. I wish to observe, however, that on this and one very similar occasion, it was very unlike the kind of conversation which Lord Byron is described as holding with various individuals who have written about him. Still more unlike was it to what one would have supposed his conversation to be; it was exactly that of nine-tenths of the cultivated class of English gentlemen, careless and unconscious of everything but the present moment. Lord Byron ceased to be more than one of the party, and stood some sharp jokes, practical and verbal, with more good nature than would have done many of the ciphers whom one is doomed to tolerate in society.

‘We returned as we went, but no opportunity presented itself of introducing any subject of interest beyond that of the place and time. His lordship seemed quite restored by the excursion, and in the evening came to the Resident’s, bearing himself towards everybody in the same easy, gentlemanly way that rendered him the delight and ornament of every society in which he chose to unbend himself.

‘The Resident was as absolute a monarch as Ulysses, and I dare say much more hospitable and obliging. He found quarters for the whole Anglo-Italian party, in the best houses of the town, and received them on the following morning at the most luxurious of breakfasts, consisting, among other native productions, of fresh-gathered grapes, just ripened, but which were pronounced of some danger to be eaten, as not having had the “first rain.” This is worthy of note, as having been apparently a ground of their being taken by Lord Byron in preference to the riper and safer figs and nectarines; but he deemed it a fair reason for an apology to the worthy doctor of the 8th Regiment (Dr. Scott), who had cautioned the company against the fruit.

‘“I take them, doctor,” said his lordship, “as I take other prohibited things – in order to accustom myself to any and all things that a man may be compelled to take where I am going – in the same way that I abstain from all superfluities, even salt to my eggs or butter to my bread; and I take tea, Mrs. Knox, without sugar or cream. But tea itself is, really, the most superfluous of superfluities, though I am never without it.”

‘I heard these observations as they were made to Dr. Scott, next to whom I was sitting, towards the end of the table; but I could not hear the animated conversation that was going on between his lordship and Mrs. Knox, beyond the occasional mention of “Penelope,” and, when one of her children came in to her, “Telemachus” – names too obviously à propos of the place and persons to be omitted in any incidental conversation in Ithaca.

‘The excursion to the “School of Homer” (why so called nobody seemed to know) was to be made by water; and the party of the preceding day, except the lady, embarked in an elegant country boat with four rowers, and sundry packages and jars of eatables and drinkables. As soon as we were seated under the awning – Lord Byron in the centre seat, with his face to the stern – Trelawny took charge of the tiller. The other passengers being seated on the side, the usual small flying general conversation began. Lord Byron seemed in a mood calculated to make the company think he meant something more formal than ordinary talk. Of course there could not be anything said in the nature of a dialogue, which, to be honest, was the kind of conversation that I had at heart. He began by informing us that he had just been reading, with renewed pleasure, David Hume’s Essays. He considered Hume to be by far the most profound thinker and clearest reasoner of the many philosophers and metaphysicians of the last century. “There is,” said he, “no refuting him, and for simplicity and clearness of style he is unmatched, and is utterly unanswerable.” He referred particularly to the Essay on Miracles. It was remarked to him, that it had nevertheless been specifically answered, and, some people thought, refuted, by a Presbyterian divine, Dr. Campbell of Aberdeen. I could not hear whether his lordship knew of the author, but the remark did not affect his opinion; it merely turned the conversation to Aberdeen and “poor John Scott,” the most promising and most unfortunate literary man of the day, whom he knew well, and who, said he, knew him (Lord Byron) as a schoolboy. Scotland, Walter Scott (or, as his lordship always called him, “Watty”), the “Waverley Novels,” the “Rejected Addresses,” and the English aristocracy (which he reviled most bitterly), were the prominent objects of nearly an hour’s conversation. It was varied, towards the end of the voyage, in this original fashion: “But come, gentlemen, we must have some inspiration. Here, Tita, l’Hippocrena!”