Princes
, as
they
never
appeared more fascinating than in
Marmion
and the
Lady of the
Lake
. He was pleased to coincide, and to dwell on the description of
your Jameses as no less royal than poetical. He spoke alternately of
Homer and yourself, and seemed well acquainted with both; so
(with
the exception of the Turks
and your humble servant) you were in very
good company. I defy Murray to have exaggerated his Royal Highness's
opinion of your powers, nor can I pretend to enumerate all he said on
the subject; but it may give you pleasure to hear that it was conveyed
in language which would only suffer by my attempting to transcribe it,
with a tone and taste which gave me a very high idea of his
abilities and accomplishments, which I had hitherto considered as
confined to
manners
, certainly superior to those of any living
gentleman
.
This interview was accidental. I never went to the levée; for having
seen the courts of Mussulman and Catholic sovereigns, my curiosity was
sufficiently allayed; and my politics being as perverse as my rhymes, I
had, in fact, "no business there." To be thus praised by your Sovereign
must be gratifying to you; and if that gratification is not alloyed by
the communication being made through me, the bearer of it will consider
himself very fortunately and sincerely,
Your obliged and obedient servant,
Byron
.
P.S.—Excuse this scrawl, scratched in a great hurry, and just after a
journey.
The correspondence which begins with this letter laid the
foundation of a firm friendship between the two poets. Scott was
naturally annoyed by the attack upon him in
English Bards, etc
.
(lines 171-174), made by "a young whelp of a Lord Byron." Though
Childe Harold
seemed to him "a clever poem," it did not raise his
opinion of Byron's character. Murray, hoping to heal the breach between
them, wrote to Scott, June 27, 1812 (
Memoir of John Murray
, vol.
i. p. 213), giving Byron's account of the conversation with the Prince
Regent.
"But the Prince's great delight," says Murray, "was Walter Scott,
whose name and writings he dwelt upon and recurred to incessantly. He
preferred him far beyond any other poet of the time, repeated several
passages with fervour, and criticized them faithfully.... Lord Byron
called upon me, merely to let off the raptures of the Prince
respecting you, thinking, as he said, that if I were likely to have
occasion to write to you, it might not be ungrateful for you to hear
of his praises."
Scott's answer (July 2) enclosed the following letter from himself to
Byron:
"Edinburgh, July 3d, 1812.
"
My Lord,—I am uncertain if I ought to profit by the apology which is
afforded me, by a very obliging communication from our acquaintance,
John Murray, of Fleet Street, to give your Lordship the present
trouble. But my intrusion concerns a large debt of gratitude due to
your Lordship, and a much less important one of explanation, which I
think I owe to myself, as I dislike standing low in the opinion of any
person whose talents rank so highly in my own, as your Lordship's most
deservedly do.
"The first
count, as our technical language expresses it,
relates to the high pleasure I have received from the
Pilgrimage of
Childe Harold, and from its precursors; the former, with all its
classical associations, some of which are lost on so poor a scholar as
I am, possesses the additional charm of vivid and animated
description, mingled with original sentiment; but besides this debt,
which I owe your Lordship in common with the rest of the reading
public, I have to acknowledge my particular thanks for your having
distinguished by praise, in the work which your Lordship rather
dedicated in general to satire, some of my own literary attempts. And
this leads me to put your Lordship right in the circumstances
respecting the sale of
Marmion, which had reached you in a
distorted and misrepresented form, and which, perhaps, I have some
reason to complain, were given to the public without more particular
inquiry. The poem, my Lord, was
not written upon contract for a
sum of money—though it is too true that it was sold and published in
a very unfinished state (which I have since regretted), to enable me
to extricate myself from some engagements which fell suddenly upon me
by the unexpected misfortunes of a very near relation. So that, to
quote statute and precedent, I really come under the case cited by
Juvenal, though not quite in the extremity of the classic author:
'Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendit Agaven.'
And so much for a mistake, into which your Lordship might easily fall,
especially as I generally find it the easiest way of stopping
sentimental compliments on the beauty, etc., of certain poetry, and
the delights which the author must have taken in the composition, by
assigning the readiest reason that will cut the discourse short, upon
a subject where one must appear either conceited or affectedly rude
and cynical.
"As for my attachment to literature, I sacrificed for the pleasure of
pursuing it very fair chances of opulence and professional honours, at
a time of life when I fully knew their value; and I am not ashamed to
say, that in deriving advantages in compensation from the partial
favour of the public, I have added some comforts and elegancies to a
bare independence. I am sure your Lordship's good sense will easily
put this unimportant egotism to the right account, for—though I do
not know the motive would make me enter into controversy with a fair
or an
unfair literary critic—I may be well excused for a wish
to clear my personal character from any tinge of mercenary or sordid
feeling in the eyes of a contemporary of genius. Your Lordship will
likewise permit me to add that you would have escaped the trouble of
this explanation, had I not understood that the satire alluded to had
been suppressed, not to be reprinted. For in removing a prejudice on
your Lordship's own mind, I had no intention of making any appeal by
or through you to the public, since my own habits of life have
rendered my defence as to avarice or rapacity rather too easy.
"Leaving this foolish matter where it lies, I have to request your
Lordship's acceptance of my best thanks for the flattering
communication which you took the trouble to make Mr. Murray on my
behalf, and which could not fail to give me the gratification which I
am sure you intended. I dare say our worthy bibliopolist overcoloured
his report of your Lordship's conversation with the Prince Regent, but
I owe my thanks to him nevertheless, for the excuse he has given me
for intruding these pages on your Lordship. Wishing you health,
spirit, and perseverance, to continue your pilgrimage through the
interesting countries which you have still to pass with
Childe
Harold, I have the honour to be, my Lord,
"Your Lordship's obedient servant,
"
Walter Scott.
"P.S.—Will your Lordship permit me a verbal criticism on
Childe
Harold, were it only to show I have read his Pilgrimage with
attention?
Nuestra Dama de la Pena means, I suspect, not our
Lady of Crime or Punishment, but our Lady of the Cliff; the difference
is, I believe, merely in the accentuation of
peña."
To Scott Byron replied with the letter given in the text. Scott's
answer, which followed in due course, will be found in
.
The Prince Regent, it may be added, showed his appreciation of Scott's
poetry by offering him, on the death of Pye, the post of poet laureate.
Scott refused, on the ground, apparently, that the office had been made
ridiculous by the previous holder.
"At the time when Scott and Byron were the two lions of London,
Hookham Frere observed, 'Great poets formerly (Homer and Milton) were
blind; now they are lame'"
(
Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers
, P. 194).
The Turkish ambassador and suite were at the ball.
Byron had already written his "Stanzas to a Lady Weeping,"
suggested by the rumour that Princess Charlotte had burst into tears, on
being told that there would be no change of Ministry when the Prince of
Wales assumed the Regency. They appeared anonymously in the
Morning
Chronicle
for March 7, 1812, under the title of a "Sympathetic
Address
to a Young Lady." They were published, as Byron's work,
with
The Corsair
, in February, 1814. The verses rather betray the
influence of Moore than express his own feelings at the time. In
Don
Juan
(Canto XII. stanza lxxxiv.) he thus speaks of the Regent—
"There, too, he saw (whate'er he may be now)
A Prince, the prince of princes at the time,
With fascination in his very bow,
And full of promise, as the spring of prime.
Though royalty was written on his brow,
He had then the grace, too, rare in every clime,
Of being, without alloy of fop or beau,
A finish'd gentleman from top to toe."
Dallas found him, shortly after his introduction to the prince, "in a
full-dress court suit of clothes, with his fine black hair in powder,"
prepared to attend a levee. But the levee was put off, and the
subsequent avowal of the authorship of the stanzas rendered it
impossible for him to go (
Recollections
, p. 234).
List of Letters
Contents
[August, 1812?]
,—If tears which you saw and know I am not apt
to shed,—if the agitation in which I parted from you,—agitation which
you must have perceived through the
whole
of this most
nervous
affair, did not commence until the moment of leaving you
approached,—if all I have said and done, and am still but too ready to
say and do, have not sufficiently proved what my real feelings are, and
must ever be towards you, my love, I have no other proof to offer. God
knows, I wish you happy, and when I quit you, or rather you, from a
sense of duty to your husband and mother, quit me, you shall acknowledge
the truth of what I again promise and vow, that no other in word or
deed, shall ever hold the place in my affections, which is, and shall
be, most sacred to you, till I am nothing. I never knew till
that
moment
the
madness
of my dearest and most beloved friend; I
cannot express myself; this is no time for words, but I shall have a
pride, a melancholy pleasure, in suffering what you yourself can
scarcely conceive, for you do not know me. I am about to go out with a
heavy heart, because my appearing this evening will stop any absurd
story which the event of the day might give rise to. Do you think
now
I am
cold
and
stern
and
artful
? Will
even
others
think so? Will your
mother
ever—that mother
to whom we must indeed sacrifice much, more, much more on my part than
she shall ever know or can imagine? "Promise not to love you!" ah,
Caroline, it is past promising. But I shall attribute all concessions to
the proper motive, and never cease to feel all that you have already
witnessed, and more than can ever be known but to my own heart,—perhaps
to yours. May God protect, forgive, and bless you. Ever, and even more
than ever,
Your most attached,
Byron
.
P. S.—These taunts which have driven you to this, my dearest Caroline,
were it not for your mother and the kindness of your connections, is
there anything on earth or heaven that would have made me so happy as to
have made you mine long ago? and not less
now
than
then
,
but
more
than ever at this time. You know I would with pleasure
give up all here and all beyond the grave for you, and in refraining
from this, must my motives be misunderstood? I care not who knows this,
what use is made of it,—it is to
you
and to
you
only that
they are
yourself (sic)
. I was and am yours freely and most
entirely, to obey, to honour, love,—and fly with you when, where, and
how you yourself
might
and
may
determine.
Lady Caroline's infatuation for Byron, expressed in various
ways—once (in July, 1813) by a self-inflicted stab with a table-knife,
or a broken glass—became the talk of society.
"Your little friend, Caro William," writes the Duchess of Devonshire,
May 4, 1812, "as usual, is doing all sorts of imprudent things for him
and with him."
Again she writes, six days later, of Byron:
"The ladies, I hear, spoil him, and the gentlemen are jealous of him.
He is going back to Naxos, and then the husbands may sleep in peace. I
should not be surprised if Caro William were to go with him, she is so
wild and imprudent"
(The
Two Duchesses
, pp. 362, 364). But Lady Caroline's
extravagant adoration wearied Byron, who felt that it made him
ridiculous; Lady Melbourne gave him sound advice about her
daughter-in-law; and he was growing attached to Miss Milbanke, and, when
rejected by her, at first to Lady Oxford, and later to Lady Frances
Wedderburn Webster. When Lady Bessborough endeavoured to persuade her
daughter to leave London for Ireland, Lady Caroline is said to have
forced herself into Byron's room, and implored him to fly with her.
Byron refused, conducted her back to Melbourne House, wrote her the
letter printed above, and, as she herself admits, kept the secret. In
December, 1812, Lady Caroline burned Byron in effigy, with "his book,
ring, and chain," at Brocket Hall. The lines which she wrote for the
ceremony are preserved in Mrs. Leigh's handwriting, and given in
.
From Ireland Lady Caroline continued the siege, threatening to follow
him into Herefordshire, demanding interviews, and writing about him to
Lady Oxford. At length Byron sent her the letter, probably in November,
1812, which she professes to publish in
Glenarvon
(vol. iii.
chap. ix.). The words are acknowledged by Byron to have formed part at
least of the real document, which is here quoted as printed in the
novel:
"Mortanville Priory, November the 9th.
"Lady Avondale,—I am no longer your lover; and since you oblige me to
confess it, by this truly unfeminine persecution, ... learn, that I am
attached to another; whose name it would, of course, be dishonourable
to mention. I shall ever remember with gratitude the many instances I
have received of the predilection you have shown in my favour. I shall
ever continue your friend, if your ladyship will permit me so to style
myself; and, as a first proof of my regard, I offer you this advice,
correct your vanity, which is ridiculous; exert your absurd caprices
upon others; and leave me in peace.
"Your most obedient servant,
"Glenarvon."
The first effect of this letter and her unrequited passion was, as she
told Lady Morgan, to deprive her temporarily of reason, and it may be
added that, when she was a child, her grandmother was so alarmed by her
eccentricities as to consult a doctor on the state of her mind. The
second effect was to render her temper so ungovernable that William Lamb
decided on a separation. All preliminaries were arranged; the solicitor
arrived with the documents; but the old charm reasserted itself, and she
was found seated by her husband, "feeding him with tiny scraps of
transparent bread and butter" (Torrens,
Memoirs of Lord
Melbourne
, vol. i. p. 112). The separation did not take place till
1825.
Throughout 1812-14 Lady Caroline continued to write to Byron, at first
asking for interviews. Two of her last letters to him, written
apparently on the eve of his leaving England, in 1816, are worth
printing, though they increase the mystery of
Glenarvon
. (See
Appendix III.,
and
.)
In Isaac Nathan's
Fugitive Pieces
(1829), a section is devoted to
"Poetical Effusions, Letters, Anecdotes, and Recollections of Lady
Caroline Lamb."
Lady Caroline wrote three novels:
Glenarvon
(1816);
Graham
Hamilton
(1822); and
Ada Reis; a Tale
(1823).
Glenarvon
, apart from its biographical interest, is unreadable.
"I do not know," writes C. Lemon to Lady H. Frampton (Journal of
Mary Frampton, pp. 286, 287), "all the characters in
Glenarvon, but I will tell you all I do know. I am not
surprised at your being struck with a few detached passages; but
before you have read one volume, I think you will doubt at which end
of the book you began. There is no connection between any two ideas in
the book, and it seems to me to have been written as the sages of
Laputa composed their works. 'Glenarvon' is Lord Byron; 'Lady
Augusta,' the late Duchess of Devonshire; 'Lady Mandeville'—I think
it is Lady Mandeville, but the lady who dictated Glearvon's farewell
letter to Calantha—is Lady Oxford. This letter she really dictated to
Lord Byron to send to Lady Caroline Lamb, and is now very much
offended that she has treated the matter so lightly as to introduce it
into her book. The best character in it is the 'Princess of
Madagascar' (Lady Holland), with all her Reviewers about her. The
young Duke of Devonshire is in the book, but I forget under what name.
I need not say that the heroine is Lady Caroline's own self."
In July, 1824, she was out riding, when she accidentally met Byron's
funeral on its way to Newstead. "I am sure," she wrote to Murray, July
13, 1824, "I am very sorry I ever said one unkind word against him." Her
mind never recovered the shock, and she died in January, 1828, in the
presence of her husband, at Melbourne House. (See also
.)
List of Letters
Contents
High Street, Cheltenham, Sept. 5, 1812.
Dear Sir
,—Pray have the goodness to send those despatches, and a No. of
the
E.R.
with the rest. I hope you have written to Mr. Thompson,
thanked him in my name for his present, and told him that I shall be
truly happy to comply with his request.—How do you go on? and when is
the graven image, "with
bays and wicked rhyme upon't
," to grace,
or disgrace, some of our tardy editions?
me "
Rokeby
"
who the deuce is he?—no matter, he has good
connections, and will be well introduced. I thank you for your
inquiries: I am so so, but my thermometer is sadly below the poetical
point.
will you give
me
or
mine
for a poem
of six
cantos, (
when complete—no
rhyme,
no
recompense,) as like
the last two as I can make them? I have some ideas which one day may be
embodied, and till winter I shall have much leisure.
Believe me, yours very sincerely,
Byron
.
P. S.—My
question is in the true style of Grub Street; but, like
Jeremy Diddler
, I only "ask for information."—Send me Adair
on
Diet and Regimen
, just republished by Ridgway
.
Rokeby
, completed December 31, 1812, was published
in the following year, with a dedication to John Morritt, to whom Rokeby
belonged. It was, as Scott admits in the Preface to the edition of 1830,
comparatively a failure. In the popularity of Byron he finds the chief
cause of the small success which his poem obtained.
"To have kept his ground at the crisis when Rokeby appeared,"
he writes, "its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength,
and to have possessed all his original advantages, for a mighty and
unexpected rival was advancing on the stage—a rival not in poetical
powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in which the
present writer had hitherto preceded better men than himself. The
reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little
velitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate,
in the first two cantos of Childe Harold."
On this rivalry Byron wrote the passage in his Diary for November 17,
1813. A further cause for the cold reception of
Rokeby
was its
inferiority both to the
Lay
and to
Marmion
. In Letter vii.
of the
Twopenny Post-bag
, Moore writes thus of
Rokeby
"Should you feel any touch of poetical glow,
We've a Scheme to suggest—Mr. Sc—tt, you must know,
(Who, we're sorry to say it, now works for the Row)
Having quitted the Borders, to seek new renown,
Is coming by long Quarto stages, to Town;
And beginning with Rokeby (the job's sure to pay)
Means to do all the Gentlemen's Seats on the way.
Now the Scheme is (though none of our hackneys can beat him)
To start a fresh Poet through Highgate to meet him;
Who, by means of quick proofs—no revises—long coaches—
May do a few Villas before Sc—tt approaches—
Indeed, if our Pegasus be not curst shabby,
He'll reach, without found'ring, at least Woburn Abbey."
The Giaour
, published in 1813, for which Murray
paid, not Byron, but Dallas, 500 guineas.
Kenney's
Raising the Wind
, act i. sc. 1:
| Diddler |
O Sam, you haven't got such a thing as tenpence about
you, have you? |
| Sam |
Yes. And I mean to keep it about me, you see. |
| Diddler |
Oh, aye, certainly. I only asked for information. |
James MacKittrick (1728-1802), who assumed the name of
Adair, published, in 1804,
An Essay on Diet and Regimen, as
indispensable to the Recovery and Preservation of Firm Health,
especially to Indolent, Studious, Delicate and Invalid; with appropriate
cases
.
List of Letters
Contents
Cheltenham, September 10, 1812.
My Dear Lord,—
lines which I sketched off on your hint are still, or
rather
were
, in an unfinished state, for I have just committed
them to a flame more decisive than that of Drury