The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals Volume II Part 42

"Ladies and gentlemen,--I know nothing I have done to offend you, and has set ('sic') those who are sent here to hiss me; I will be very much obliged to you to turn them out."

This unfortunate speech made matters worse; the audience refused to hear her, and her part was finished by Miss Searle.

Miss Mudie was said to be only eight years old. But J. Kemble, being asked if she were really such a child, answered, "'Child'! Why, sir, when I was a very young actor in the York Company, that little creature kept an inn at Tadcaster, and had a large family" (Clark Russell's 'Representative Actors', p. 363, 'note' 2). The 'Morning Post' (April 5, 1806) says that Miss Mudie afterwards joined a children's troupe in Leicester Place, where, "though deservedly discountenanced at a great theatre, she will, no doubt, prove an acquisition to the infant establishment" (Ashton's 'Dawn of the XIXth Century in England', pp.

333-336).]

[Footnote 2: Macbeth, act iv. sc. 1.]

[Footnote 3: For Lun, or Rich, see p. 157, end of 'note' 1. Hunt, in the notes to Johnson's 'Prologue' (Gilfillan's edition of Johnson's 'Poestical Works', p. 38), is said to be "a famous stage-boxer, Mahomet, a rope-dancer."]

256.--To William Bankes.

Cheltenham, September 28, 1812.

MY DEAR BANKES,--When you point out to one how people can be intimate at the distance of some seventy leagues, I will plead guilty to your charge, and accept your farewell, but not _wittingly_, till you give me some better reason than my silence, which merely proceeded from a notion founded on your own declaration of _old_, that you hated writing and receiving letters. Besides, how was I to find out a man of many residences? If I had addressed you _now_, it had been to your borough, where I must have conjectured you were amongst your const.i.tuents. So now, in despite of Mr. N. and Lady W., you shall be as "much better" as the Hexham post-office will allow me to make you. I do a.s.sure you I am much indebted to you for thinking of me at all, and can't spare you even from amongst the superabundance of friends with whom you suppose me surrounded.

You heard that Newstead [1] is sold--the sum 140,000; sixty to remain in mortgage on the estate for three years, paying interest, of course.

Rochdale is also likely to do well--so my worldly matters are mending. I have been here some time drinking the waters, simply because there are waters to drink, and they are very medicinal, and sufficiently disgusting. In a few days I set out for Lord Jersey's [2], but return here, where I am quite alone, go out very little, and enjoy in its fullest extent the _dolce far niente_. What you are about I cannot guess, even from your date;--not dauncing to the sound of the gitourney in the Halls of the Lowthers? one of whom is here, ill, poor thing, with a phthisic. I heard that you pa.s.sed through here (at the sordid inn where I first alighted) the very day before I arrived in these parts. We had a very pleasant set here; at first the Jerseys, Melbournes [3], Cowpers [4], and Hollands, but all gone; and the only persons I know are the Rawdons [5] and Oxfords [6], with some later acquaintances of less brilliant descent.

But I do not trouble them much; and as for your rooms and your a.s.semblies "they are not dreamed of in our philosophy!!"--Did you read of a sad accident in the Wye t'other day [7]? A dozen drowned; and Mr.

Rossoe, a corpulent gentleman, preserved by a boat-hook or an eel-spear, begged, when he heard his wife was saved--no--_lost_--to be thrown in again!!--as if he could not have thrown himself in, had he wished it; but this pa.s.ses for a trait of sensibility. What strange beings men are, in and out of the Wye!

I have to ask you a thousand pardons for not fulfilling some orders before I left town; but if you knew all the cursed entanglements I _had_ to wade through, it would be unnecessary to beg your forgiveness.--When will Parliament (the new one) meet [8]?--in sixty days, on account of Ireland, I presume: the Irish election will demand a longer period for completion than the const.i.tutional allotment. Yours, of course, is safe, and all your side of the question. Salamanca is the ministerial watchword, and all will go well with you. I hope you will speak more frequently, I am sure at least you _ought_, and it will be expected. I see Portman means to stand again. Good night.

Ever yours most affectionately,

[Greek: Mpairon.]

[Footnote 1: Newstead was put up at Garraway's in the autumn of 1812; but only 90,000 were bid, and the property was therefore withdrawn.

Subsequently it was privately sold to a Mr. Claughton, who found himself unable to complete the purchase, and forfeited 25,000 on the contract.

Newstead was eventually sold, in November, 1817, to Colonel Wildman, Byron's Harrow schoolfellow, for 94,500.]

[Footnote 2: For Lady Jersey, see p. 112, 'note' 1 [Footnote 1 of Letter 230]. The following pa.s.sage, from Byron's 'Detached Thoughts', gives an account of the party at Middleton:

"In 1812 at Middelton (Lord Jersey's), amongst a goodly company of Lords, Ladies, and wits, etc., there was poor old Vice Leach, the lawyer, attempting to play off the fine gentleman. His first exhibition, an attempt on horseback, I think, to escort the women--G.o.d knows where--in the month of November, ended in a fit of the Lumbago--as Lord Ogleby says, 'a grievous enemy to Gallantry and address'--and if he could have but heard Lady Jersey quizzing him (as I did) next day for the _cause_ of his malady, I don't think that he would have turned a 'Squire of dames' in a hurry again. He seemed to me the greatest fool (in that line) I ever saw. This was the last I saw of old Vice Leach, except in town, where he was creeping into a.s.semblies, and trying to look young--and gentlemanly.

"Erskine too!--Erskine was there--good but intolerable. He jested, he talked, he did everything admirably, but then he 'would' be applauded for the same thing twice over. He would read his own verses, his own paragraphs, and tell his own story again and again; and then 'the trial by Jury!!!'--I almost wished it abolished, for I sate next him at dinner, and, as I had read his published speeches, there was no occasion to repeat them to me. Chester (the fox-hunter), surnamed 'Cheek Chester,' and I sweated the Claret, being the only two who did so. Cheek, who loves his bottle, and had no notion of meeting with a 'bonvivant' in a scribbler, in making my eulogy to somebody one evening, summed it up in 'by G-d, he 'drinks like a Man'!'"]

[Footnote 3: Sir p.e.n.i.ston Lamb, created an Irish baron as Lord Melbourne in 1770, an Irish viscount in 1780, and an English peer in 1815, married, in 1769, Elizabeth, only daughter of Sir Ralph Milbanke, of Halnaby, Yorkshire, one of the cleverest and most beautiful women of the day. Horace Walpole, writing to Mason, May 12, 1778, mentions her when she was at the height of her beauty.

"On Tuesday," he says, "I supped, after the opera, at Mrs. Meynel's with a set of the most fashionable company, which, take notice, I very seldom do now, as I certainly am not of the age to mix often with young people. Lady Melbourne was standing before the fire, and adjusting her feathers in the gla.s.s. Says she, 'Lord, they say the stocks will blow up! That will be very comical.'"

Greville ('Memoirs', ed. 1888, vol. vi. p. 248) a.s.sociates her name with that of Lord Egremont. Reynolds painted her with her eldest son in his well-known picture 'Maternal Affection'. Her second son, William, afterwards Prime Minister, used to say,

"Ah! my mother was a most remarkable woman; not merely clever and engaging, but the most sagacious woman I ever knew"

('Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne', vol. i. p. 135). Lady Melbourne, whom Byron spoke of as

"the best, the kindest, and ablest female I have ever known, old or young,"

died in 1818, her husband in 1828. He thus described her to Lady Blessington ('Conversations', p. 225):

"Lady M., who might have been my mother, excited an interest in my feelings that few young women have been able to awaken. She was a charming person--a sort of modern Aspasia, uniting the energy of a man's mind with the delicacy and tenderness of a woman's. She wrote and spoke admirably, because she felt admirably. Envy, malice, hatred, or uncharitableness, found no place in her feelings. She had all of philosophy, save its moroseness, and all of nature, save its defects and general 'faiblesse'; or if some portion of 'faiblesse' attached to her, it only served to render her more forbearing to the errors of others. I have often thought, that, with a little more youth, Lady M.

might have turned my head, at all events she often turned my heart, by bringing me back to mild feelings, when the demon pa.s.sion was strong within me. Her mind and heart were as fresh as if only sixteen summers had flown over her, instead of four times that number."]

[Footnote 4: Peter, fifth Earl Cowper (1778-1837), married, in 1805 Emily Mary Lamb, daughter of Lord Melbourne; she married, secondly, in 1839, Lord Palmerston.]

[Footnote 5: Francis Rawdon, second Earl of Moira (1754-1826), created Lord Rawdon (1783), and Marquis of Hastings (1817), married, in 1804, the Countess of Loudoun.]

[Footnote 6: Edward Harley (1773-1848) succeeded his uncle as fifth Earl of Oxford in 1790, and married, in 1794, Jane Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. James Scott, Vicar of Itchin, Hants. It is probably of Lady Oxford, whose picture was painted by Hoppner, that Byron spoke to Lady Blessington ('Conversations', p. 255),

"Even now the autumnal charms of Lady----are remembered by me with more than admiration. She resembled a landscape by Claude Lorraine, with a setting sun, her beauties enhanced by the knowledge that they were shedding their last dying beams, which threw a radiance around. A woman... is only grateful for her 'first' and 'last' conquest. The first of poor dear Lady----'s was achieved before I entered on this world of care; but the 'last', I do flatter myself, was reserved for me, and a 'bonne bouche' it was."

The following pa.s.sage certainly relates to Lady Oxford:

"There was a lady at that time," said Byron (Medwin's 'Conversations', pp. 93, 94), "double my own age, the mother of several children who were perfect angels, with whom I had formed a 'liaison' that continued without interruption for eight months. The autumn of a beauty like her's is preferable to the spring in others. She told me she was never in love till she was thirty; and I thought myself so with her when she was forty. I never felt a stronger pa.s.sion; which she returned with equal ardour.... She had been sacrificed, almost before she was a woman, to one whose mind and body were equally contemptible in the scale of creation; and on whom she bestowed a numerous family, to which the law gave him the right to be called father. Strange as it may seem, she gained (as all women do) an influence over me so strong, that I had great difficulty in breaking with her, even when I knew she had been inconstant to me: and once was on the point of going abroad with her, and narrowly escaped this folly."

To be near the Oxfords at Eywood, in Herefordshire, Byron took Kinsham Court, a dower-house of the family, where Bishop Harley died in 1788. At one time, as is evident from his correspondence with Hanson, he was bent on going abroad with Lady Oxford. In the end he only accompanied her to Portsmouth. Of Lady Oxford, Uvedale Price wrote thus to Rogers (Clayden, 'Rogers and his Contemporaries', vol. i. pp. 397, 398):

"This is a melancholy subject"--[the death, by consumption of Lord Aberdeen's children]--"and I must go to another. Poor Lady Oxford! I had heard with great concern of her dangerous illness, but hoped she might get through it, and was much, very much grieved to hear that it had ended fatally. I had, as you know, lived a great deal with her from the time she came into this country, immediately after her marriage; but for some years past, since she went abroad, had scarcely had any correspondence or intercourse with her, till I met her in town last spring. I then saw her twice, and both times she seemed so overjoyed to see an old friend, and expressed her joy so naturally and cordially, that I felt no less overjoyed at seeing her after so long an absence. She talked, with great satisfaction, of our meeting for a longer time this next spring, little thinking of an eternal separation. There could not, in all respects, be a more ill-matched pair than herself and Lord Oxford, or a stronger instance of the cruel sports of Venus, or, rather, of Hymen--

'Cui placet impares Formas atque animos sub juga ahenea Saevo mittere c.u.m joco.'

"It has been said that she was, in some measure, forced into the match. Had she been united to a man whom she had loved, esteemed, and respected, she herself might have been generally respected and esteemed, as well as loved; but in her situation, to keep clear of all misconduct required a strong mind or a cold heart; perhaps both, and she had neither. Her failings were in no small degree the effect of circ.u.mstances; her amiable qualities all her own. There was something about her, in spite of her errors, remarkably attaching, and that something was not merely her beauty. 'Kindness has resistless charms,'

and she was full of affectionate kindness to those she loved, whether as friends or as lovers. As a friend, I always found her the same, never at all changeful or capricious. As I am not a very rigid moralist, and am extremely open to kindness, 'I could have better spared a better woman.'"]