My Recollections of Lord Byron Part 65

Many others have said the same thing. The truth is, that if by giving way to reflection--which was a necessity of his genius--and through circ.u.mstances--which were a fatality of his destiny--he has shown himself melancholy in his writings and very often in his dispositions, it is no less certain that by temperament and taste, by the activity, penetration, and complex character of his mind, he very often showed himself to be extremely gay. No one better than he seized upon the absurd and ridiculous side of things or more easily found cause for laughter. His gayety--the result of a frank, open, volatile nature, full of varying moods--was easily excited by any absurdities, ridiculous pretensions, or witty sallies; and then he became so expansive and charming, body and soul with him both seemed to laugh in such unison, that it was impossible not to catch the contagion; but his laughter was ever devoid of malice. Slight defects of harmony in things, or proportion, or mutual relation, easily gave rise to mirthful sensations in him. Being full of admiration for the beautiful, and having, moreover, a great sense of mutual fitness, and much activity of mind, it was with extraordinary and instinctive prompt.i.tude that he seized upon the contradictory relations existing between objects, and indeed on all showing a voluntary absence of order and beauty in the conduct of free reasonable beings. His laughter was then quite as aesthetical as it was innocent. And even if it were not admitted, as it is by all philosophical moralists, that no sort of personal calculation enters into this entirely spontaneous emotion, no sentiment of superiority over the being we are laughing at--for _selfishness and laughter never coexist_--if it were possible, I say, to doubt all this, even then to see Lord Byron laugh would have sufficed to give the right conviction.

For truly his mirth was a charming thing; the very air surrounding him appeared to laugh.

Then would his soul, that often required to emerge from its deep reflections, unbend itself, and alternately disport or repose in utter self-abandonment. It dismissed thought, as it were, in order to become a child again; to deliver itself over to all the caprices of those myriad changeful fugitive impressions that course through the brain at moments of excitement.

Moore often recurs to Byron's liveliness. "Nothing, indeed, could be more amusing and delightful.... It was like the bursting gayety of a boy let loose from school, and seemed as if there was no extent of fun or tricks of which he was not capable." When Moore visited him at Mira, in the autumn of 1812, and accompanied him to Venice, the former expressed himself as follows in his memorandum of that occasion:--

"As we proceeded across the lagoon in his gondola the sun was just setting, and it was an evening such as Romance would have chosen for a first sight of Venice, rising 'with her tiara of bright towers' above the wave; while to complete, as might be imagined, the solemn interest of the scene, I behold it in company with him who had lately given a new life to its glories, and sung of that fair City of the Sea thus grandly:--

'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 Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles!'

"But whatever emotions the first sight of such a scene might, under other circ.u.mstances, have inspired me with, the mood of mind in which I now viewed it was altogether the reverse of what might have been expected. The exuberant gayety of my companion, and the recollections--any thing but romantic--into which our conversation wandered, put at once completely to flight all poetical and historical a.s.sociations; and our course was, I am almost ashamed to say, one of uninterrupted merriment and laughter till we found ourselves at the steps of my friend's palazzo on the Grand Ca.n.a.l. All that ever happened, of gay or ridiculous, during our London life together; his sc.r.a.pes and my lecturings; our joint adventures with the Bores and Blues, the two great enemies, as he always called them, of London happiness; our joyous nights together at Walter's, Kinnaird's, etc.; and that 'd--d supper of Rancliffe's, which ought to have been a dinner;' all was pa.s.sed rapidly in review between us, and with a flow of humor and hilarity on his side of which it would have been difficult for persons even far graver than even I can pretend to be, not to have caught the contagion."

Lord Byron was especially p.r.o.ne to mirth and fun in the society of those he liked; to jest and laugh with any one was a great proof of his sympathy for them. When he wrote to absent dear ones, he would constantly say, "I have many things to tell you for us to laugh over together." In several letters addressed from Greece to Madame G----, he informs her of these treasures of mirth, held in reserve for the day of meeting, that they might laugh together. Lord Byron rarely used flattering language to those he loved. It was rather by looks than by words that he expressed his feelings and his approbation. His delight with intimates was to bring out strongly their defects, as well as their qualities and merits, by dint of jests, clever innuendo, and charming sallies of humor. The prompt.i.tude with which he discovered the slightest weakness, the faintest symptom of exaggeration or affectation, can hardly be credited. It might almost be said that the persons on whom he bestowed affection became _transparent_ for him, that he dived into their thoughts and feelings.

It was this state of mind especially that gave rise to those sallies of wit which formed such a striking feature of his intelligence. Then his conversation really became quite dazzling. In his glowing language all objects a.s.sumed unforeseen and picturesque aspects. New and striking thoughts followed from him in rapid succession, and the flame of his genius lighted up as if winged with wildfire. Those who have not known him at these moments can form no idea of what it was from his works.

For, in the silence of his study, when, pen in hand, he was working out his grand conceptions, the lightning strokes lost much of their brilliant intensity; and although we find, especially in "Don Juan" and "Beppo," delightful pages of rich comic humor, only those who knew him can judge how superior still his conversation was. But in this gay exercise of his faculties, which was to him a real enjoyment in all his sallies or even in his railleries, not one iota of malice could be traced--unless we call by that name the amus.e.m.e.nt springing from mirth and wit indulged. Even if his shafts were finely pointed, they were at the same time so inoffensive that the most susceptible could not be wounded.

The great pleasure he took in jesting appears to have belonged to his organization, for it accompanied him throughout life. We have already seen what his nurses, his preceptors, and the friends of his childhood said on this subject. We have observed his sympathy for the old cup-bearer of his family mansion; the pleasantries expended on the quack Lavander, who was always promising to cure his foot, and never did; the jesting tone of his boyish correspondence; afterward the masqueradings that took place at Newstead Abbey; then again his gay doings with Moore and Rogers in London; the jests pervading the correspondence of his maturer years; then their concentration in "Beppo" and "Don Juan;" and finally, how often, even in Greece, when he was already unwell at Missolonghi, he could not help giving way to pleasantry and childish play to such a degree that good Dr. Kennedy, when he wished to convert him to his somewhat intolerant orthodoxy at Cephalonia, found one of the obstacles to consist in the difficulty of keeping Lord Byron serious.

"He was fond," says the doctor, "of saying smart and witty things, and never allowed an opportunity of punning to escape him.... He generally showed high spirits and hilarity.... I have heard him say several witty things; but as I was always anxious to keep him grave and present important subjects for his consideration, after allowing the laugh to pa.s.s I again endeavored to resume the seriousness of the conversation, while his lordship constantly did the same."

And then Kennedy adds:--"My impression from them was, that they were unworthy a man of his accomplishments: I mean the desire of jesting."[150]

These words well characterize the honest Methodist, who, like many other good and n.o.ble minds, yet could not understand fun. This incapability is also sometimes the case with persons of a sour, ill-natured, or susceptible disposition, whose excessive vanity is shocked at all simple, innocent explosions of gayety and pleasantry.[151] Colonel Stanhope, who knew Lord Byron at the same period, and who was not a Methodist, but who from other causes could not appreciate the poet's vivacious wit, said:--

"The mind of Lord Byron was like a volcano, full of fire and wrath, sometimes calm, often dazzling and playful.... As a companion," he adds, "no one could be more amusing than Lord Byron; he had neither pedantry nor affectation about him, but was natural and playful as a boy. His conversation resembled a stream; sometimes smooth, sometimes rapid, and sometimes rushing down in cataracts. It was a mixture of philosophy and slang, of every thing,--like his 'Don Juan.' He was a patient, and in general a very attentive, listener. When, however, he did engage with earnestness in conversation, his ideas succeeded each other with such uncommon rapidity that he could not control them. They burst from him impetuously; and although he both attended to and noticed the remarks of others, yet he did not allow these to check his discourse for an instant."

"There was usually," writes Count Gamba, his friend and companion in Greece, in his interesting work, ent.i.tled "Last Travels of Lord Byron in Greece," "a liveliness of spirit and a tendency to joke, even at times of great danger, when other men would have become serious and pre-occupied. This disposition of mind gave him a kind of air of frankness and sincerity which was quite irresistible with those persons even who were most prejudiced against him."

This allusion of Count Gamba refers to the letter which Byron wrote in the midst of the Suliotes, among whom he had taken refuge during the storm and to escape the Turks.

"If any thing," writes Lord Byron, on the point of embarking for Missolonghi, and in his last letter to Moore, "if any thing in the way of fever, fatigue, famine, or otherwise, should cut short the middle age of a brother warbler, like Garcila.s.so de la Vega, I pray you remember me in 'your smiles and wine.'

"I have hopes that the cause will triumph; but, whether it does or no, still 'honor must be minded as strictly as a milk diet.' I trust to observe both.

BYRON."

"It is matter of history," continues Count Gamba, "that Lord Byron, in consequence of vexations to which he was ever a victim, added to the rigorous diet which he followed (he only fed upon vegetables and green tea, to show that he could live as frugally as a Greek soldier), and from the impossibility which he found to take any exercise at Missolonghi, had a nervous fit, which deprived him of the power of speech and alarmed all his friends and acquaintances. When the crisis had worn off, he merely laughed over it."

"Even at Missolonghi," says Parry, who knew him there only in the midst of troubles and vexations of every description and quite at the close of his life, "he loved to jest in words and actions. These pleasantries lightened his spirits, and prevented him from dwelling on disagreeable thoughts."

Perhaps this disposition of character was the result of his French origin, for it is scarcely known or even appreciated in England.

"Yet," exclaims the greatest-minded woman of our day (Madame G. Sand), "it is that disposition which forms the charm of every delicate intimacy, and which often prevents our committing many follies and stupidities.

"To look for the ridiculous side of things is to discover their weakness. To laugh at the dangers in the midst of which we find ourselves is to get accustomed to brave them; like the French, who go into action with a laugh and a song. To quiz a friend is often to save him from a weakness in which our pity might perhaps have allowed him to linger. To laugh at one's self is to preserve one's self from the effects of an exaggerated self-love. I have noticed that the people who never joke are gifted with a childish and insupportable vanity."

Nevertheless, there are high and n.o.ble natures that never laugh, and are incapable of understanding the pleasures of gayety. But minds like these have some vacuum; they certainly lack what is called wit.

Lord Byron's gayety, full of dazzling wit and varied tints, like his other faculties, never went beyond the limits befitting its exercise in a beautiful soul. As much as the truly ridiculous, that which a great writer has defined, "_the strength, small or great, of a free being, out of proportion with its end_,"--as much, I say, as the truly ridiculous attracted and amused him, just as much did grave, moral, and physical disorders, produced by corruption of body or soul, sadden and repel his nature, so full of harmony. He could never laugh at these latter. The grave disorders of soul that exist in free beings, and that are therefore voluntary, raised sadness, anger, or indignation in him, according to the degree of vice or disorder. We need seek no other origin for his bitterest satires in verse and prose. Great ugliness and physical defects certainly inspired him with great disgust, consequent upon his pa.s.sion for the beautiful; but, at the same time, involuntary misfortunes excited his liveliest compa.s.sion, often testified by the most generous deeds.

We know, for instance, that Lord Byron had a defect in one of his feet, but a defect so slight--although it has been greatly exaggerated--that people have never been able to say in which of the two feet it did exist. Nor did it in any way diminish the grace and activity all his movements displayed. If its existence were painful for him, that must have been because his sense of harmony looked upon this defect as detrimental to the perfection of his physical beauty. But whatever may have been the cause of this sensibility, it sufficed in any case to make him feel a generous compa.s.sion for all those afflicted with any defect a.n.a.logous to his own. Lord Harrington, then Colonel Stanhope, says:--

"Contrary to what we observe in most people, Lord Byron, who was always very sensitive to the sufferings of others, showed greatest sympathy for those who had any imperfection akin to his own." At Ravenna, his favorite beggar limped. And on him Lord Byron bestowed the privilege of picking up all the largest coins struck down by his dexterous pistol-shots in the forest of pines. We have said he never laughed at any involuntary defect, not even at a person falling (as is so often the case), for fear it might have been caused by bodily weakness, neither did he ridicule any of the weaknesses or shortcomings of intelligence.

He did not laugh at a bad poet on account of his bad verses. When he was at Pisa, an Irishman there was engaged in translating the "Divine Comedy." The translation was very heavy and faulty; but the translator was most enthusiastic about the great poet, and absolutely lived on the hope of getting his work published. All the English at Pisa, including the kind Sh.e.l.ley, were turning him into ridicule. Lord Byron alone would not join in the laugh. T----'s sincerity won for him grace and compa.s.sion. Indeed Lord Byron did still more; for he wrote and entreated Murray to publish the work, so as to give the poor poet this consolation. Not content with that step, he wrote to Moore to beg Jeffrey not to criticise him, undertaking himself to ask Gifford the same thing, through Murray. "Perhaps they might speak of the commentaries without touching on the text," said he; and then he added with his usual pleasantry, "However, we must not trust to it. _Those dogs! the text is too tempting._"[152]

Nor did he laugh at exaggerated devotion, even if it were extravagant or superst.i.tious, provided he thought it sincere. Countess G----, paternal aunt of Countess G----, the greatest beauty of Romagna in 1800, had fallen into such extreme mystical devotion, through the brutal jealousy of her husband, that she died in the odor of sanct.i.ty. This lady wrote to her brother, Count G----, at Genoa, saying how happy she was, and giving no end of praise to "the good Jesuit Fathers," and speaking of her devotion to St. Teresa. Madame G----, having sent one of these letters to Lord Byron, he answered: "I consider all that as _very respectable_, and, moreover, _enviable_. The aunt is right; I wish I could love the good fathers and St. Teresa. After all, what does this devotee of St. Teresa, this friend of the good Jesuit Fathers, want?

Happiness; and she has found it! What else are we seeking for?"

We have already seen elsewhere[153] that Lord Byron never, at any period of his life, laughed at religion or its _sincere_ votaries, whatever might be their creed of belief. Provided their errors came from the heart, they commanded his respect. Dallas himself, in reference to the skeptical stanzas of his twenty-second year, can not help rendering him justice.

"I have not noticed," says he, "a spirit of mockery in you; and you have the little-known art of not wishing that others should be of your opinion in matters of religious belief. I am less disinterested; I have the greatest desire, nay, even a great hope, to see you some day believe as I do." We have seen, also, what Kennedy said of him in Greece[154].

Dr. Millingen bears the same testimony:--

"During the whole of the time that I visited him, I never heard him utter a single word of contempt for the Christian religion. On the contrary, he used often to say, that nothing could be more reprehensible than to turn into ridicule those who believed in it, since in this strange world it is equally difficult to arrive at knowing what one is or is not to believe; and since many freethinkers teach doctrines which are as much beyond the reach of human comprehension as the mysteries of the revelation itself."

When, by habit of looking at serious things from their absurd and ridiculous side, he feared he had done the same with regard to some religious ceremony, he at once hastened to explain himself. Thus he writes to Moore from Pisa:--

"I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean it to be so; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me every now and then. Still, I do a.s.sure you that I am a very good Christian. Whether you believe me in this, I do not know."

But much as he respected sincere religious feelings, equally did he detest that hypocrisy which despises in secret the idol it adores in public. Even at the transition period of what has been called his skepticism, it was extremely distasteful to him to speak against religion, to despise and mock even the hollow worship practiced outwardly from human motives and personal interest. In Livadia at this time he met with a Greek bishop, whose actions were quite at variance with his language. How great the antipathy Lord Byron conceived for him, may be seen by the notes appended to the first and second cantos of "Childe Harold." For the Pharisees of our days he felt all the anger due to whited sepulchres. No, certainly, it was not true virtue in general, nor any one virtue in particular, that he laughed at sometimes; nor was it friendship, or love, or religion, or any truly respectable sentiment that ever excited his mirth. He only ridiculed semblances, vain appearances, when those who paraded them did so from _personal interest_. Lord Byron knew too well, by experience, that many virtues admired and set forth as such do but wear a mask in reality; and he thought it useful for society to divest them of it, and show the hidden visage. Why should he have shown any consideration for the virtue that patronizes charity-b.a.l.l.s, in order to acquire the right of violating, with impunity, the duties of a Christian wife? or that other female virtue which weighs itself in the balance with the privilege of directing Almacks? or that, wishing to unite the advantages of modesty with the gratification of pa.s.sion? In short, why should he have shown consideration for persons whose merit consists in never _allowing themselves to be seen as they are_? He was very disrespectful, likewise, toward certain friendships that he knew by experience to be full of wordy counsel, but finding nothing to say in the way of consolation or defense. This peculiar variety of friendship had made him suffer greatly. In his serious poems he calls it "_the loss of his illusions_;"

and expresses himself with misanthropical indignation, or with a bleeding heart. But, returning to a milder philosophy, he ended by smiling and jesting at it, in words like these:--

"Look'd grave and pale to see her friend's fragility, For which most friends reserve their sensibility."

Seriously; was he bound to any great tenderness toward such friendship as that? And does it not suffice to set Lord Byron right with _true friendship_ to hear him say, after having laughed about false friends:--

"But this is not my maxim: had it been, Some heart-aches had been spared me: yet I care not-- I would not be a tortoise in his screen Of stubborn sh.e.l.l, which waves and weather wear not.

'Tis better, on the whole, to have felt and seen That which humanity may bear, or bear not: Twill teach discernment to the sensitive, And not to pour their ocean in a sieve."[155]

Friendship was so necessary to him that he wrote to Moore, on the eve of his marriage, 15th of October, 1814:

"An' there were any thing in marriage that would make a difference between my friends and me, particularly in your case, I would none on't."

People should read all he said of Lord Clare and Moore, and see with what almost jealous susceptibility he guarded the t.i.tle of friend,[156]

before they can understand the value he attached to true friendship. But among many of the _privileges_ he conceded to friendship, _duties_ also held their place.

And if we pa.s.s from friendship to love, could he really bestow such respect on the loves of a Lady Adeline, or of those who, he said, "embrace you to-day, thinking of the novel they will write to-morrow."

His ideal of true love has been noticed; and he became impatient when he saw it confounded with any thing else. At twenty-two years of age he wrote to his young friend, the Rev. Mr. Harness:--

"I told you the fate of B---- and H---- in my last. So much for these sentimentalists, who console themselves in their stews for the loss--the never-to-be-recovered loss--the despair of the refined attachment of a couple of drabs! You censure my life, Harness: when I compare myself with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive myself a monument of prudence--a walking statue--without feeling or failing; and yet the world in general hath given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. Yet I like the men, and, G.o.d knows, ought not to condemn their aberrations. But I own I feel provoked when they dignify all this by the name of love--romantic attachments for things marketable for a dollar!"

Yes, Lord Byron never did respect the love that can be bartered for dollars. And afterward, when irritation had given way to a milder and more tolerant philosophy, he took the liberty of laughing at it, both in prose and verse. It may however, be urged against him, that he sometimes turned into ridicule even his deepest sentiments; and Moore remarks this as a defeat, apropos of the jesting tone he a.s.sumed once at Bologna, when writing to Hoppner. But Moore forgets to say, that while his heart called him to Ravenna, he was speaking against the counsels given by Hoppner, who, in order to deter him from this visit, for reasons previously cited,[157] had made the darkest prognostications regarding its consequence; and though he could not shake Lord Byron's determination, it is very probable that he may have upset his imagination. Thus he was trying to show himself ready for every thing.

Such pleasantries are like the song of one who is alarmed in the dark.

Moreover, from his manner of judging human nature, and his lively sense of the ridiculous, Lord Byron was well aware that a light tone is alone admissible for speaking to others of a love they do not share, and more especially when they disapprove of it. He felt that the gayety of Ovid and the gallantry of Horace are better suited to indifferent people than Petrarch's high-flown phrases and sentimentalities, or Werther's despair. It was through this same nice perception of the sentiments entertained by indifferent individuals that he sometimes adopted a light, playful tone in conversation, or in his correspondence, when speaking of friendship, devoted feelings of any kind, and a host of sentiments very serious and deep within his own heart, but which he believed less calculated to interest others. And if sometimes his singular penetration of the human heart called forth mockery, it sprang more frequently from seeing fine sentiments put forth in flagrant contradiction with conduct, or morality looked upon as a mere thing of outward decorum, speedily to be set aside, if once the actors were removed from the eyes of the world. He would not grant his esteem to fine sentiments expressed by writers who could be bribed; to the promises of heroes who noisily enroll combatants, while themselves remaining safe by their fireside; or to the generosity that displays itself from a balcony. And, a.s.suredly, he had a right to be particular in his estimate of this latter virtue, which he himself always practiced secretly, and in the shade. He would not consent to its being bartered, nor that people should have the honor of it without any sacrifice on their part. Thus he replied to Moore, who was in an ecstasy about the generosity of Lord some one:--"I shall believe all that when you prove to me that there is no advantage in openly helping a man like you." With wonderful, and, I might almost say, supernatural perspicacity, Lord Byron penetrated into the arcana of souls, and did not come out thence with a very good opinion of what he had seen. But, kind as he was, he did not like to probe too deeply the motives of others, especially as a rule of action for himself. As he says in his admirable satire of "Don Juan,"--

"'Tis sad to burrow deep to roots of things, So much are they besmeared with earth."