Bellingham, while engaged in the timber trade at Archangel,
fancied himself wronged by the Russian Government, and the British
Ambassador at St. Petersburg, Lord G. Leveson-Gower. Returning to
England, he set up in Liverpool as an insurance broker, continuing to
press his claims against Russia on the Ministry without success. On May
11, 1812, he shot Spencer Perceval, First Lord of the Treasury and
Chancellor of the Exchequer, dead in the lobby of the House of Commons.
Bellingham was hanged before Newgate on May 18. Byron took a window,
says Moore (
Life
, p. 164), to see the execution. He
"was
accompanied on the occasion by his old schoolfellows, Mr. Bailey and Mr.
John Madocks. They went together from some assembly, and, on their
arriving at the spot, about three o'clock in the morning, not finding
the house that was to receive them open, Mr. Madocks undertook to rouse
the inmates, while Lord Byron and Mr. Bailey sauntered, arm in arm, up
the street. During this interval, rather a painful scene occurred.
Seeing an unfortunate woman lying on the steps of a door, Lord Byron,
with some expression of compassion, offered her a few shillings; but,
instead of accepting them, she violently pushed away his hand, and,
starting up with a yell of laughter, began to mimic the lameness of his
gait. He did not utter a word; but 'I could feel,' said Mr. Bailey, 'his
arm trembling within mine, as we left her.' "
In Byron's
Detached Thoughts
is an anecdote of Baillie, whose
name is here misspelt by Moore:
"Baillie (commonly called 'Long'
Baillie, a very clever man, but odd) complained in riding, to our friend
Scrope Davies, that he had a stitch in his side. 'I don't wonder
at it,' said Scrope, 'for you ride like a tailor.' Whoever has
seen B. on horseback, with his very tall figure on a small nag, would
not deny the justice of the repartee."
List of Letters
Contents
238—to Bernard Barton1
8, St. James's St., June 1, 1812.
The most satisfactory answer to the concluding part of your letter is
that Mr. Murray will republish your volume, if you still retain your
inclination for the experiment, which I trust will be successful. Some
weeks ago my friend Mr. Rogers showed me some of the stanzas in MS., and
I then expressed my opinion of their merit, which a further perusal of
the printed volume has given me no reason to revoke. I mention this, as
it may not be disagreeable to you to learn that I entertained a very
favourable opinion of your powers, before I was aware that such
sentiments were reciprocal.
Waiving your obliging expressions as to my own productions, for which I
thank you very sincerely, and assure you that I think not lightly of the
praise of one whose approbation is valuable, will you allow me to talk
to you candidly, not critically, on the subject of yours? You will not
suspect me of a wish to discourage, since I pointed out to the publisher
the propriety of complying with your wishes. I think more highly of your
poetical talents than it would, perhaps, gratify you to hear expressed,
for I believe, from what I observe of your mind, that you are above
flattery. To come to the point, you deserve success, but we know, before
Addison wrote his
Cato
, that desert does not always command it.
But, suppose it attained,—
"
You know what ills the author's life assail,
Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail."
2
Do not renounce writing, but never trust entirely to authorship. If you
have a possession, retain it;
will be, like Prior's fellowship
, a
last and sure resource. Compare Mr. Rogers with other authors of the
day; assuredly he is amongst the first of living poets, but is it to
that he owes his station in society, and his intimacy in the best
circles? No, it is to his prudence and respectability; the world (a bad
one, I own) courts him because he has no occasion to court it. He is a
poet, nor is he less so because he was something more.
am not sorry to
hear that you are not tempted by the vicinity of Capel Loft, Esq're.
, though, if he had done for you what he has done for the
Bloomfields, I should never have laughed at his rage for patronising.
But a truly constituted mind will ever be independent. That you may be
so is my sincere wish, and, if others think as well of your poetry as I
do, you will have no cause to complain of your readers.
Believe me, etc.
Bernard Barton (1784-1849), the friend of Charles Lamb, and
the Quaker poet, to whose
Poems and Letters
(1849) Edward
FitzGerald prefixed a biographical introduction, published
Metrical
Effusions
(1812),
Poems by an Amateur
(1817),
Poems
(1820), and several other works. He was for many years a clerk in a bank
at Woodbridge, in Suffolk. Byron's advice to him was that of Lamb: "Keep
to your bank, and your bank will keep you." Two letters, [
,
] written by him
to Byron in 1814, showing his admiration of the poet, and his
appreciation of the generosity of his character, and
of the draft
of Byron's answer, are given in
.
"There mark what ills the scholar's life assail,—
Toil, envy, want, the patron and the jail."
Johnson's
Vanity of Human Wishes
, line 159.
Matthew Prior (1664-1721) became a Fellow of St. John's
College, Cambridge, in 1688.
For Capell Lofft and the Bloomfields, see
Letters
,
vol. i. p. 337,
notes
I and 2 [Footnotes 4 and 5 of Letter 167].
List of Letters
Contents
June 25, 1812.
My Dear Lord
,—I must appear very ungrateful, and have, indeed, been
very negligent, but till last night I was not apprised of Lady Holland's
restoration, and I shall call to-morrow to have the satisfaction, I
trust, of hearing that she is well.—I hope that neither politics nor
gout have assailed your Lordship since I last saw you, and that you also
are "as well as could be expected."
other night, at a ball, I was presented by order to our gracious
Regent, who honoured me with some conversation, and professed a
predilection for poetry
.—I confess it was a most unexpected honour,
and I thought of poor Brummell's
adventure, with some apprehension
of a similar blunder. I
now great hope, in the event of Mr. Pye's
decease, of "warbling truth at court," like Mr. Mallet
of
indifferent memory.—Consider, one hundred marks a year! besides the
wine and the disgrace; but then remorse would make me drown myself in my
own butt before the year's end, or the finishing of my first
dithyrambic.—So that, after all, I shall not meditate our laureate's
death by pen or poison.
Will you present my best respects to Lady Holland? and believe me, hers
and yours very sincerely.
Byron
.
The ball was given in June, 1812, at Miss Johnson's (see
Memoir of John Murray
, vol. i. p. 212). In the words
"predilection for poetry" Byron probably refers to the phrase in the
Regent's letter to the Duke of York (February 13, 1812): "I have no
predilections to indulge, no resentments to gratify." Moore, in the
Twopenny Post-bag
, twice fastens on the phrase. In "The
Insurrection of the Papers", a dream suggested by Lord Castlereagh's
speech— "It would be impossible for His Royal Highness to disengage his
person from the accumulating pile of papers that encompassed it"—he
writes:
"But, oh, the basest of defections!
His Letter about 'predilections'—
His own dear Letter, void of grace,
Now flew up in its parent's face! "
And again, in the "Parody of a Celebrated Letter":
"I am proud to declare I have no predilections,
My heart is a sieve, where some scatter'd affections
Are just danc'd about for a moment or two,
And the finer they are, the more sure to run through."
The grandfather of Beau Brummell, who was in business in
Bury Street, St. James's, also let lodgings. One of his lodgers, Charles
Jenkinson, afterwards Earl of Liverpool, obtained for his landlord's
son, William Brummell, a clerkship in the Treasury. The Treasury clerk
became so useful to Lord North that he obtained several lucrative
offices; and, dying in 1794, left £65,000 in the hands of trustees for
division among his three children. The youngest of these was George
Bryan Brummell (1788-1840), the celebrated Beau.
George Brummell went from Eton to Oriel College, Oxford, where his
undergraduate career is traced in "Trebeck," a character in Lister's
Granby
(1826). From Oxford Brummell entered the Tenth Hussars, a
favourite regiment of the Prince of Wales. Well-built and well-mannered,
possessed of admirable tact, witty and original in conversation,
inexhaustible in good temper and good stories, a master of impudence and
banter, the new cornet made himself so agreeable to the prince that, at
the latter's marriage, Brummell attended him, both at St. James's and to
Windsor, as "a kind of
chevalier d'honneur
." In 1798 Brummell left
the army with the rank of captain. A year later he came of age, and
settled at 4, Chesterfield Street, Mayfair.
On his intimacy with the Prince Regent, Brummell founded the
extraordinary position which he achieved in society. Fashion was in
those days a power; and he was its dictator—the oracle, both for men
and women, of taste, manners, and dress. His ascendency rested in some
degree on solid foundations. He was not a mere fop, but conspicuous for
the quiet neatness of his dress—for "a certain exquisite propriety," as
Byron described it to Leigh Hunt—and, at a time when the opposite was
common, for the scrupulous cleanliness of his person and his linen. An
excellent dancer, clever at
vers de société
, an agreeable singer,
a talented artist, a judge of china, buhl, and other objects of
virtù
, a collector of snuff-boxes, a connoisseur in canes, he had
gifts which might have raised him above the Bond Street
flaneur
,
or the idler at Watier's Club. Well-read in a desultory fashion, he
wrote verses which were not without merit in their class. The following
are the first and last stanzas of
The Butterfly's Funeral
, a poem
which was suggested by Mrs. Dorset's
Peacock at Home
and Roscoe's
Butterfly's Ball
:—
"Oh ye! who so lately were blythsome and gay,
At the Butterfly's banquet carousing away;
Your feasts and your revels of pleasure are fled,
For the soul of the banquet, the Butterfly's dead!
...
And here shall the daisy and violet blow,
And the lily discover her bosom of snow;
While under the leaf, in the evenings of spring,
Still mourning his friend, shall the grasshopper sing."
In the days of his prosperity (1799-1816), Brummell knew everybody to
whose acquaintance he condescended. His Album, in which he collected 226
pieces of poetry, many by himself, others by celebrities of the day, is
a curious proof of his popularity. It contains contributions from such
persons as the Duchess of Devonshire, Erskine, Lord John Townshend,
Sheridan, General Fitzpatrick, William Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne)
and his brother George, and Byron. Lady Hester Stanhope (
Memoirs
,
vol. i. pp. 280-283) knew him well. She describes him "riding in Bond
Street, with his bridle between his fore-finger and thumb, as if he held
a pinch of snuff;" gives many instances of his audacious effrontery, and
yet concludes that "the man was no fool," and that she "should like to
see him again."
The story that Brummell told the Prince Regent to ring the bell was
denied by him. A more probable version of the story is given in Jesse's
Life of Beau Brummell
(vol. i. p. 255),
"that one evening, when Brummell and Lord Moira were engaged in
earnest conversation at Carlton House, the prince requested the former
to ring the bell, and that he replied without reflection, 'Your Royal
Highness is close to it,' upon which the prince rang the bell and
ordered his friend's carriage, but that Lord Moira's intervention
caused the unintentional liberty to be overlooked."
The rupture between them is attributed by Jesse to Mrs. Fitzherbert's
influence. Whatever the cause, the prince cut his former friend. A short
time afterwards, Brummell, walking with Lord Alvanley, met the prince
leaning on the arm of Lord Moira. As the prince, who stopped to speak to
Lord Alvanley, was moving on, Brummell said to his companion, "Alvanley,
who's your fat friend?" In the
Twopenny Postbag
Moore makes the
Regent say, in the "Parody of a Celebrated Letter":
"Neither have I resentments, or wish there should come ill
To mortal—except, now I think on it, Beau Brummell,
Who threatened last year, in a superfine passion,
To cut me, and bring the old king into fashion."
Brummell's position withstood the loss of the Regent's friendship. He
became one of the most frequent visitors to the Duke and Duchess of
York, at Oatlands Park (
Journal of T. Raikes
, vol. i. p. 146);
and his friendship with the duchess lasted till her death.
He was ruined by gambling at Watier's Club, of which he was perpetual
president. This club, which was in Piccadilly, at the corner of Bolton
Street, was originally founded, in 1807, by Lord Headfort, John Madocks,
and other young men, for musical gatherings. But glees and snatches soon
gave way to superlative dinners and gambling at macao. Byron, Moore, and
William Spencer belonged to Watier's—the only men of letters admitted
within its precincts. From 1814 to 1816 Brummell lost heavily; he could
obtain no further supplies, and was completely ruined. In his distress
he wrote to Scrope Davies, in May, 1816:
"My Dear Scrope,—Lend me two hundred pounds; the banks are shut, and
all my money is in the three per cents. It shall be repaid to-morrow
morning.
Yours,
George Brummell.
The reply illustrates Byron's remark that
"Scrope Davies is a wit, and a man of the world, and feels as much as
such a character can do."
"My Dear George,—'Tis very unfortunate, but all my money is in the
three per cents.
Yours,
S. Davies.
On May 17,
"obliged," says Byron (Detached Thoughts), "by that affair of
poor Meyler, who thence acquired the name of 'Dick the
Dandykiller'—(it was about money and debt and all that)—to retire to
France,"
Brummell took flight to Dover, and crossed to Calais. Watier's Club died
a natural death, in 1819, from the ruin of most of its members.
Amongst Brummell's effects at Chesterfield Street was a screen which he
was making for the Duchess of York. The sixth panel was occupied by
Byron and Napoleon, placed opposite each other; the former, surrounded
with flowers, had a wasp in his throat (Jesse's
Life
, vol. i. p.
361). At Calais Brummell bought a French grammar to study the language.
When Scrope Davies was asked, says Byron (
Detached Thoughts
),
"what progress Brummell had made in French, he responded 'that
Brummell had been stopped, like Buonaparte in Russia, by the
Elements.' I have put this pun into Beppo, which is 'a
fair exchange and no robbery;' for Scrope made his fortune at several
dinners (as he owned himself) by repeating occasionally as his own
some of the buffooneries with which I had encountered him in the
morning."
Brummell died, in 1840, at Caen, after making acquaintance with the
inside of the debtor's prison in that town—imbecile, and in the asylum
of the
Bon Sauveur
. He is buried in the Protestant cemetery of
Caen. France has raised a more lasting monument to his fame in Barbey
d'Aurevilly's
Du Dandysme et de Georges Brummell
(1845).
Henry James Pye (1745-1813) was, from 1790 to his death,
poet laureate, in which post he succeeded Thomas Warton, and was
followed by Southey. Mathias, in the
Pursuits of Literature
(Dialogue ii. lines 69, 70), says:
"With Spartan Pye lull England to repose,
Or frighten children with Lenora's woes;"
and again (
ibid
., lines 79, 80):
"Why should I faint when all with patience hear,
And laureat Pye sings more than twice a year?"
His birthday odes were so full of "vocal groves and feathered choirs,"
that George Steevens broke out with the lines:
"When the pie was opened," etc.
Pye's
magnum opus
was
Alfred
(1801), an epic poem in six
books.
David Mallet, or Malloch (1705-1765), is best known for his
ballad of
William and Margaret
, his unsubstantiated claim to the
authorship of
Rule, Britannia
, and his edition of Bolingbroke's
works. He was appointed, in 1742, under-secretary to Frederick, Prince
of Wales.
List of Letters
Contents
240—to Professor Clarke1
St. James's Street, June 26, 1812.
Will you accept my very sincere congratulations on your second volume,
wherein I have retraced some of my old paths, adorned by you so
beautifully, that they afford me double delight? The part which pleases
me best, after all, is the preface, because it tells me you have not yet
closed labours, to yourself not unprofitable, nor without gratification,
for what is so pleasing as to give pleasure? I
sent my copy to Sir
Sidney Smith, who will derive much gratification from your anecdotes of
Djezzar
, his "energetic old man." I doat upon the Druses; but who
the deuce are they with their Pantheism? I shall never be easy till I
ask
them
the question. How much you have traversed! I must resume
my seven leagued boots and journey to Palestine, which your description
mortifies me not to have seen more than ever. I still sigh for the
Ægean. Shall not you always love its bluest of all waves, and brightest
of all skies? You have awakened all the gipsy in me. I long to be
restless again, and wandering; see what mischief you do, you won't allow
gentlemen to settle quietly at home. I will not wish you success and
fame, for you have both, but all the happiness which even these cannot
always give.
Edward Daniel Clarke (1769-1822), appointed Professor of
Mineralogy at Cambridge, in 1808, was the rival whose travels Hobhouse
was anxious to anticipate. He is described by Miss Edgeworth, in 1813
(
Letters
, vol. i. p. 205), as
"a little, square, pale,
flat-faced, good-natured-looking, fussy man, with very intelligent eyes,
yet great credulity of countenance, and still greater benevolence."
Byron met Clarke at Cambridge in November, 1811, discussed Greece with
him, and was relieved to find that he knew "no Romaic." Clarke was an
indefatigable traveller, and, as he was a botanist, mineralogist,
antiquary, and numismatist, he made good use of his opportunities. The
marbles, including the Eleusinian Ceres, which he brought home, are in
the Fitzwilliam Museum. His mineralogical collections were purchased,
after his death, by the University of Cambridge; and his coins by Payne
Knight. His
Travels in Various Countries of Europe, Asia, and
Africa
appeared at intervals, from 1810 to 1823, in six quarto
volumes. The following letter was written by Clarke to Byron, after the
appearance of
Childe Harold
:
"Trumpington, Wednesday morning.
Dear Lord Byron,—From the eagerness which I felt to make known my
opinions of your poem before others had expressed
any upon the
subject, I waited upon you to deliver my hasty, although hearty,
commendation. If it be worthy your acceptance, take it once more, in a
more deliberate form! Upon my arrival in town I found that Mathias
entirely coincided with me. 'Surely,' said I to him, 'Lord Byron, at
this time of life, cannot have experienced such keen anguish as those
exquisite allusions to what older men
may have felt seem to
denote!' This was his answer: '
I fear he has—he could not else
have written such a poem.' This morning I read the second canto with
all the attention it so highly merits, in the peace and stillness of
my study; and I am ready to confess I was never so much affected by
any poem, passionately fond of poetry as I have been from my earliest
youth....
"The eighth stanza, '
Yet if as holiest men,' etc., has never
been surpassed. In the twenty-third, the sentiment is at variance with
Dryden:
'Strange cozenage! none would live past years again.'
And it is perhaps an instance wherein, for the first time, I found not
within my own breast an echo to your thought, for I would not '
be
once more a boy;' but the generality of men will agree with you, and
wish to tread life's path again.
In the twelfth stanza of the same canto, you might really add a very
curious note to these lines:
'Her sons too weak the sacred shrine to guard,
Yet felt some portion of their mother's pains,'
by stating this fact: When the last of the Metopes was taken from the
Parthenon, and, in moving it, a great part of the superstructure with
one of the triglyphs, was thrown down by the work men whom Lord Elgin
employed, the Disdar, who beheld the mischief done to the building, took
his pipe out of his mouth, dropped a tear, and, in a supplicating tone
of voice, said to Lusieri—
Greek: Télos! I was present at the time.
Once more I thank you for the gratification you have afforded me.
Believe me, ever yours most truly,
E. D. Clarke."
In Clarke's
Travels
(Part II. sect. i. chap, xii.,
"Greece, Egypt, and the Holy Land") will be found an account of Djezzar
Pasha, who fortified Acre in 1775, and with Sir Sidney Smith, defended
it against Buonaparte, March 16 to May 20, 1799. Clarke (
ibid
.)
mentions the Druses detained by Djezzar as hostages.
List of Letters
Contents
241—To Walter Scott1
St. James's Street, July 6, 1812.
Sir
,—I have just been honoured with your letter.—I feel sorry that you
should have thought it worth while to notice the "evil works of my
nonage," as the thing is suppressed
voluntarily
, and your
explanation is too kind not to give me pain. The Satire was written when
I was very young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my wrath
and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of my wholesale
assertions. I cannot sufficiently thank you for your praise; and now,
waving myself, let me talk to you of the Prince Regent. He ordered me to
be presented to him at a ball; and after some sayings peculiarly
pleasing from royal lips, as to my own attempts, he talked to me of you
and your immortalities: he preferred you to every bard past and present,
and asked which of your works pleased me most. It was a difficult
question. I answered, I thought the
Lay
. He said his own opinion
was nearly similar. In speaking of the others, I told him that I thought
you more particularly the poet of