The Love Affairs of Lord Byron Part 24

V

"_But 'tis not_ thus--_and 'tis not_ here-- _Such thoughts should shake my soul, nor_ now, _Where glory decks the hero's bier, Or binds his brow._

VI

"_The sword, the banner, and the field, Glory and Greece, around me see!

The Spartan, borne upon his shield, Was not more free._

VII

"_Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!) Awake my spirit! Think through_ whom _Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake, And then strike home._

VIII

"_Tread those reviving pa.s.sions down, Unworthy manhood!--unto thee Indifferent should the smile or frown Of beauty be._

IX

"_If thou regret'st thy youth_, why love?

_The land of honourable death Is here:--up to the field, and give Away thy breath!_

X

"_Seek out--less often sought than found-- A soldier's grave, for thee the bed; Then look around, and choose thy ground, And take thy rest._"

"We perceived," Count Gamba comments, "from these lines ... that his ambition and his hope were irrevocably fixed upon the glorious objects of his expedition to Greece, and that he had made up his mind to 'return victorious or return no more.'" Readers who are better acquainted than Count Pietro alike with the English language and with the circ.u.mstances of the case will find rather more than that in them. They also reveal the memory which Byron fell back upon and lived with at the hours when he rested from the strain of his revolutionary enthusiasm. It was not the memory of Count Pietro's sister. Byron could not possibly have been thinking of her when he cried out that his love was a lonely fire at which no torch was kindled; for her love for him was far fiercer and more enduring than his love for her. His thoughts, it is quite clear, had once more strayed back to Mary Chaworth; and the internal evidence of that is confirmed by the mention of her name in two separate pa.s.sages of those "Detached Thoughts" which he threw on paper just before he left Ravenna.

His attachment to her, he then remembers, threw him out "on a wide, wide sea." He speaks of her as "My M.A.C.," and continues in a pa.s.sage often quoted:

"Alas! why do I say _My_? Our Union would have healed feuds, in which blood had been shed by our fathers; it would have joined lands broad and rich; it would have joined at least _one_ heart, and two persons not ill-matched in years (she is two years my elder); and--and--and--what has been the result? She has married a man older than herself, been wretched, and separated. I have married, and am separated; and yet _we_ are _not_ united."

This last fact, indeed, may well have impressed him as the cruellest of all. There had been two desperately unhappy marriages, and a shivering and scattering of two sets of household G.o.ds; and yet he and she, through whatever misunderstandings and scruples, had failed to set up their new structure on the ruins. He, indeed, on his part, would have asked nothing better than to be allowed to try that task of reconstruction; but she, on hers, had been too good, or too weak, or too much under the influence of well-meaning friends who believed the whole duty of woman to consist in forgiving her husband and keeping up appearances. She had kept them up, accepting martyrdom with a resignation worthy of a better cause than any which her hard-drinking husband was capable of representing, believing that she only sacrificed herself, and earning no grat.i.tude worth speaking of by doing so. But she had also sacrificed her lover.

He was one of those exceptional men who may do exceptional things with impunity--and also one of those self-willed men who, having made up their minds what is best, can never be contented with the second-best, but must always be kicking against the p.r.i.c.ks. Hence the stormy emotional career through which we have followed him, and the many experiments, reckless but half-hearted, with new ways of life; a reckless but half-hearted marriage; reckless but half-hearted intrigues, first with the Drury Lane actresses, and then with the Venetian light-o'-loves; a reckless but half-hearted career as the _cicisbeo_ of an Italian n.o.bleman's wife.

Two thoughts had been present to his mind through all these phases: the thought in the first place that he owed it to himself to prove that he was a better and a greater man than he had seemed to be, and to redeem the mess which he had made of his life by some impressive action; the thought, in the second place, of Mary Chaworth. We have seen the former thought flashing out in a letter to Moore, who was probably one of the last men in the world capable of understanding it. The latter thought is blazoned in the letter written to Mary Chaworth in the midst of the Venetian revels, and so absurdly a.s.serted by Lord Lovelace to be a letter to Augusta Leigh.

It reappears, as we have seen, in the Detached Thoughts, and also in poem after poem, from "The Dream" to the piece just cited. Evidently, therefore, it was, indeed, the thought which Byron lived with--the thought which, if not always with him, was always waiting for him when the reaction following upon excitement made room for it. There would be no escape from it until the hour when, as he put it, he looked around, and chose his ground, and took his rest; and it only remains for us to picture the last stormy scenes at the end of which rest was reached.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

DEATH IN A GREAT CAUSE

The end was not to come, as Byron may have hoped, on the field of battle.

It was his health, as he had apprehended (though without, for that reason, taking any special care of it) that was to fail him. An imprudent plunge into the winter sea while on his way to Missolonghi had upset him; and though he had temporarily recovered, he was in no state to resist the pestilential climate of that dismal swamp. He knew it, and at the very time when Stanhope was writing home that "Lord Byron burns with military ardour and chivalry," he was keenly conscious, as his own letters show, of the danger attending his residence in the most malarious quarter of a malarious town.

"If we are not taken off by the sword," he wrote on February 5, "we are like to march off with an ague in this mud basket; and, to conclude with a bad grace better _marshally_ than _marti-ally_. The d.y.k.es of Holland, when broken down, are the deserts of Arabia in comparison with Missolonghi."

The risk, though inglorious in itself, was nevertheless the price of glory; and he paid it willingly. He was, once more, as famous as at the hour when "Childe Harold" had suddenly revealed his genius, and the fame which he now tasted was of a worthier kind. Then he had dazzled and fascinated. Now he enjoyed the love and admiration, not merely of idle women, but of a whole people, and discovered that he had the power to heal feuds and to lead men. He might, or might not, live to wear, or to refuse, a kingly crown; but at least he had lived to be hailed as the Liberator of a nation, and to be revered accordingly. An anecdote preserved by Parry, the artificer who was serving under him in charge of the a.r.s.enal, ill.u.s.trates the adoration of the peasantry:

"Byron one day," Parry relates, "returned from his ride more than usually pleased. An interesting country-woman, with a fine family, had come out of her cottage and presented him with a curd cheese and some honey, and could not be persuaded to accept payment for it. 'I have felt,' he said, 'more pleasure this day, and at this circ.u.mstance, than for a long time past.'"

Such was the homage paid to him, by the humble as well as the great; but it soon became increasingly evident that though he had achieved the glory, death was to rob him of the crown. He began to have epileptic seizures; and in the midst of them, there was trouble with the Suliotes. There were only five hundred of them, and they preferred the insolent claim that one hundred and fifty of them should be promoted to be officers, and that the rest should be accorded a month's pay in advance. Colonel Stanhope tells us how he quelled the mutiny:

"Soon after his dreadful paroxysm, when he was lying on his sick-bed, while his whole nervous system completely shaken, the mutinous Suliotes, covered with dirt and splendid attire, broke into his apartment, brandishing their costly arms, and loudly demanding their rights. Lord Byron electrified by this unexpected act, seemed to recover from his sickness, and the more the Suliotes raged, the more his calm courage triumphed. The scene was truly sublime."

The mutineers suppressed, the doctors came and bled him. He pulled through, whether in consequence of their treatment or in spite of it; but his regimen and his mode of life were not such as to restore him to vigour. He was sweeping away the coats of his stomach by large and frequent doses of powerful purgative medicaments; and in the intervals between the purges he partook freely of a comfortable and potent kind of punch which Parry mixed for him. It is no wonder, therefore, that relapse succeeded relapse and that just at that hour at which fortune seemed beginning to smile upon the Greeks, his life could be seen to be ebbing away.

On April 9, while riding with Gamba, he was caught in a violent storm of rain. "I should make a fine soldier if I did not know how to stand such a trifle as this," he said to his companion; but two hours after his return he was shivering and complaining: "I am in great pain," he said to Gamba.

"I should not care for dying but I cannot bear these pains." On April 11, he was well enough to ride again, but on the 12th, he was in bed with what was diagnosed as rheumatic fever, and the fever never again left him. The inevitable proposal to bleed him was repeated. At first he resisted, with the usual talk about the lancet being more deadly than the sword, but in the end he acquiesced. "There!" he said. "You are, I see, a d----d set of butchers. Take away as much blood as you like, and have done with it."

They took twenty ounces of blood from him. It was an absurd treatment, and probably hastened the end; but he had bad doctors, and even the good doctors of these days knew no better. Moreover his const.i.tution was shattered. He was falling to pieces like an old ruin, and it is doubtful whether the wisest treatment could have saved him. There was a further rally, however, and Gamba, who was laid up in an adjoining apartment with a sprained ankle, hobbled in to see him. "I contrived," he writes, "to walk to his room. His look alarmed me much. He was too calm. He talked to me in the kindest way, but in a sepulchral tone. I could not bear it. A flood of tears burst from me, and I was obliged to retire."

Soon after this, the final delirium set in. His attendants stood by his bedside weeping copiously. They could not, says Cordy Jeaffreson cynically, have wept more copiously "if there had been a prize of a thousand guineas for the one who wept most." Afterwards he was alone, at one time with Parry, and at another time with Fletcher; and of his last articulate words there is more than one account. It is told that he spoke of Greece: "I have given her my time, my money, and my health--what could I do more? Now I give her my life." It is told that he gesticulated wildly, as if mounting a breach to an a.s.sault, and calling, half in English, half in Italian: "Forward--forward--courage--follow my example--don't be afraid." It is told again that he stammered unintelligible messages to Lady Byron and to his sister.

But all that matters little. What matters is, not Byron's last utterance, but his last action, now that neither love nor l.u.s.t, nor despair, nor bitterness, nor sloth, nor self-indulgence, held him any longer in unworthy bondage. For he had died in the act of redeeming the many wasted years, and of fulfilling the prediction of his most degraded time, that, in spite of everything, he would come to achievement at last--not merely the literary achievement which was compatible with the life of a trifler and a man of pleasure, but the more glorious achievement which is only possible to those who consent to sacrifice their ease and make a free gift of their energies to a cause which they perceive to be greater than themselves.

APPENDIX

BYRON'S LETTER TO MARY CHAWORTH

VENICE, _May 17, 1819_

MY DEAREST LOVE,

I have been negligent in not writing, but what can I say? Three years'

absence--and the total change of scene and habit make such a difference that we have never nothing in common but our affections and our relationship. But I have never ceased nor can cease to feel for a moment that perfect and boundless attachment which bound and binds me to you--which renders me incapable of _real_ love for any other human being--for 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--and 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 "h.e.l.l,"

for he places his unfortunate lovers--Francesca of Rimini and 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, and place, and feelings, I have never ceased to be the same to you in heart.

Circ.u.mstances may have ruffled my manner and hardened my spirit; you may have seen me harsh and exasperated with all things around me; grieved and tortured with your _new resolution_, and soon after the persecution of that infamous fiend who drove me from my country, and 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? I have not spirits now to write to you upon other subjects. I am well in health, and have no cause of grief but the reflection that we are not together. When you write to me speak to me of yourself, and say that you love me; never mind commonplace people and topics which can be in no degree interesting to me who see nothing in England but the country which holds _you_, or around it but the sea which divides us. They say absence destroys weak pa.s.sions, and confirms strong ones. Alas! _mine_ for you is the union of all pa.s.sions and of all affections--has strengthened itself, but will destroy me; I do not speak of physical destruction, for I have endured, and can endure, much; but the annihilation of all thoughts, feelings, or hopes, which have not more or less a reference to you and to _our recollections_.

Ever, dearest,