Madame de Staël
"did not affect to conceal her preference for the society of men to
that of her own sex,"
and was entirely above, or below, studying the feminine arts of
pleasing. In 1802 Miss Berry called on her in Paris.
"Found her in an excessively dirty cabinet—sofa singularly so;
her own dress, a loose spencer with a bare neck,"
(
Journal
, vol. ii. p. 145). A similar experience is mentioned by
Crabb Robinson (
Diary
, 1804).
"On the 28th of January," he writes, "I first waited on Madame de
Staël. I was shown into her bedroom, for which, not knowing Parisian
customs, I was unprepared. She was sitting, most decorously, in
her bed, and writing. She had her night-cap on, and her face was not
made up for the day. It was by no means a captivating spectacle; but I
had a very cordial reception, and two bright black eyes smiled
benignantly on me."
Of her political opinions Sir John Bowring (
Autobiographical
Recollections
, pp. 375, 376) has left a sketch.
"Madame de Staël was a perfect aristocrat, and her sympathies were
wholly with the great and prosperous. She saw nothing in England but
the luxury, stupidity, and pride of the Tory aristocracy, and the
intelligence and magnificence of the Whig aristocracy. These latter
talked about truth, and liberty and herself, and she supposed it was
all as it should be. As to the millions, the people, she never
inquired into their situation. She had a horror of the
canaille, but anything of sangre asul had a charm for
her. When she was dying she said, 'Let me die in peace; let my last
moments be undisturbed.' Yet she ordered the cards of every visitor to
be brought to her. Among them was one from the Duc de Richelieu.
'What!' exclaimed she indignantly, 'What! have you sent away the
Duke? Hurry! Fly after him. Bring him back. Tell him that,
though I die for all the world, I live for him.'"
Napoleon's hatred of her was intense. "Do not allow that jade, Madame de
Staël," he writes to Fouché, December 31, 1806 (
New Letters of
Napoleon I.
, p. 35), "to come near Paris." Again, March 15, 1807
(
ibid.
, p. 39), "You are not to allow Madame de Staël to come
within forty leagues of Paris. That wicked schemer ought to make up her
mind to behave herself at last." In a third letter, April 19, 1807
(
ibid.
, p. 40), he speaks of her as "paying court, one day to the
great—a patriot, a democrat, the next!... a fright, ... a worthless
woman" (Léon Lecestre's
Lettres inédites de Napoléon I'er
, 2nd
ed. vol. i. pp. 84, 88, 93).
"Old Gardner the bookseller employed Rolt and Smart to write a monthly
miscellany called the Universal Visitor. There was a formal
written contract, which Allen the printer saw.... They were bound to
write nothing else; they were to have, I think, a third of the profits
of his sixpenny pamphlet; and the contract was for ninety-nine years"
(Boswell's
Life of Dr. Johnson
, ed. Birrell, vol. iii. p. 192).
"But first the Monarch, so polite,
Ask'd Mister Whitbread if he'd be a Knight.
Unwilling in the list to be enroll'd,
Whitbread contemplated the Knights of Peg,
Then to his generous Sov'reign made a leg,
And said, 'He was afraid he was too old,'" etc.
Peter Pindar's
Instructions to a Laureat
.
List of Letters
Contents
4, Bennet Street, June 26th, 1813.
My Dearest Augusta
,—Let me know when you arrive, and when, and where,
and how, you would like to see me,—any where in short but at
dinner
. I have put off going into ye country on purpose to
waylay
you.
Ever yours,
Byron
.
List of Letters
Contents
[June, 1813.]
My Dearest Augusta
,—And if you knew
whom
I had put off besides
my journey—you would think me grown strangely fraternal. However I
won't overwhelm you with my
own praises
.
Between one and two be it—I shall, in course, prefer seeing you all to
myself without the incumbrance of third persons,
of
your
(for I won't own the relationship) fair cousin of
eleven page
memory
, who, by the bye, makes one of the finest busts I have seen
in the Exhibition, or out of it. Good night!
Ever yours,
Byron
.
P. S.—Your writing is grown like my Attorney's, and gave me a qualm,
till I found the remedy in your signature.
Letters
, vol. i. p. 54 [end of Footnote 3 of Letter 13.], Lady Gertrude Howard
married, in 1806, William Sloane Stanley, and died in 1870.
List of Letters
Contents
[Sunday], June 27th, 1813.
My Dearest Augusta
,—If
like to go with me to ye Lady Davy's
to-night, I
have
an invitation for you.
There you will see the
Stael
, some people whom you know, and
me
whom you do
not
know,—and you can talk to which you
please, and I will watch over you as if you were unmarried and in danger
of always being so. Now do as you like; but if you chuse to array
yourself before or after half past ten, I will call for you. I think our
being together before 3d people will be a new
sensation
to
both
.
Ever yours,
B.
Sir Humphry Davy (1778-1829), the son of a wood-carver of
Penzance, was apprenticed to John Borlase, a surgeon at Penzance, in
whose dispensary he became a chemist. He wrote poetry as a young man,
but soon abandoned the pursuit for science. Two poems on Byron by Davy,
one written in 1823, the other in 1824, will be found in Dr. Davy's
Memoirs of the Life of Sir H. Davy
, vol. ii. pp. 168, 169. In
October, 1798, he joined Dr. Beddoes at Bristol, where he superintended
the laboratory at his Pneumatic Institution. His
Researches, Chemical
and Philosophical
(1799), made him famous. At the Royal Institution
in London, founded in 1799, Davy became assistant-lecturer in chemistry,
and director of the chemical laboratory. There his lecture-room was
crowded by some of the most distinguished men and women of the day.
Within the next few years his discoveries in electricity and galvanism,
(1806-7) brought him European celebrity; his lectures on agricultural
chemistry (1810) marked a fresh era in farming, and inaugurated the new
movement of "science with practice." His famous discovery of the Safety
Lamp was made in 1816. He was created a baronet in 1818. A skilful
fisherman, he wrote, when in declining health,
Salmonia, or Days of
Fly-fishing
, published in 1827. Ticknor (
Life
, vol. i. p.
57), speaking of Davy in 1815, says,
"He is now about thirty-three, but
with all the freshness and bloom of five-and-twenty, and one of the
handsomest men I have seen in England. He has a great deal of vivacity,
talks rapidly, though with great precision, and is so much interested in
conversation, that his excitement amounts to nervous impatience, and
keeps him in constant motion."
Davy married, in 1812, a rich widow, Jane Aprecce,
née
Kerr
(1780-1855). The marriage brought him wealth; but it also, it is said,
impaired the simplicity of his character, and made him ambitious of
social distinction. Miss Berry (
Journal
, vol. ii. p. 535) supped
with Lady Davy in May, 1813, to meet the Princess of Wales, and notes
that among the other guests was Byron. Lady Davy, who was so dark a
brunette that Sydney Smith said she was as brown as a dry toast, was for
many years a prominent figure in the society of London and Rome. It was
of her that Madame de Staël said that she had "all Corinne's talents
without her faults or extravagances." Ticknor, who called on her in
June, 1815,
"found her in her parlour, working on a dress, the contents
of her basket strewed about the table, and looking more like home than
anything since I left it. She is small, with black eyes and hair, a very
pleasant face, an uncommonly sweet smile, and, when she speaks, has much
spirit and expression in her countenance. Her conversation is agreeable,
particularly in the choice and variety of her phraseology, and has more
the air of eloquence than I have ever heard before from a lady."
(
Life of George Ticknor
, vol. i. P. 57).
List of Letters
Contents
July 1st, 1813.
Dear Sir
,—
is an error in my dedication
. The word "
my
"
must be struck out—"my" admiration, etc.; it is a false construction
and disagrees with the signature. I hope this will arrive in time to
prevent a
cancel
and serve for a proof; recollect it is only the
"my" to be erased throughout.
is a critique in the
Satirist
, which I have
read,—fairly written, and, though
vituperative
, very fair in
judgment. One part belongs to you,
viz
., the 4
s
. and
6
d
charge; it is unconscionable, but you have no conscience.
Yours truly,
B.
The dedication was originally printed thus:
"To Samuel
Rogers, Esq., as a slight but most sincere token of my admiration of his
genius."
The Satirist
for July 1, 1813 (pp. 70-88), reviews the
Giaour
at length. It condemns it for its fragmentary character and consequent obscurity, its carelessness and defects of style; but it also
admits that the poem "abounds with proofs of genius:"
"A word in conclusion. The noble lord appears to have an
aristocratical solicitude to be read only by the opulent. Four
shillings and sixpence for forty-one octavo pages of poetry! and those
pages verily happily answering to Mr. Sheridan's image of a rivulet of
text flowing through a meadow of margin. My good Lord Byron, while you
are revelling in all the sensual and intellectual luxury which the
successful sale of Newstead Abbey has procured for you, you little
think of the privations to which you have subjected us unfortunate
Reviewers, ... in order to enable us to purchase your lordship's
expensive publication."
List of Letters
Contents
4, Benedictine Street, St. James's, July 8, 1813.
I presume by your silence that I have blundered into something noxious
in my reply to your letter, for the which I beg leave to send beforehand
a sweeping apology, which you may apply to any, or all, parts of that
unfortunate epistle. If I err in my conjecture, I expect the like from
you in putting our correspondence so long in quarantine. God he knows
what I have said; but he also knows (if he is not as indifferent to
mortals as the
nonchalant
deities of Lucretius), that you are the
last person I want to offend. So, if I have,—why the devil don't you
say it at once, and expectorate your spleen?
is out of town with Madame de Stael, who hath published an Essay
against Suicide
, which, I presume, will make somebody shoot
himself;—as a sermon by Blenkinsop, in
proof
of Christianity,
sent a hitherto most orthodox acquaintance of mine out of a chapel of
ease a perfect atheist. Have you found or founded a residence yet? and
have you begun or finished a poem? If you won't tell me what
I
have done, pray say what you have done, or left undone, yourself. I am
still in equipment for voyaging, and anxious to hear from, or of, you
before
I go, which anxiety you should remove more readily, as you
think I sha'n't cogitate about you afterwards. I shall give the lie to
that calumny by fifty foreign letters, particularly from any place where
the plague is rife,—without a drop of vinegar or a whiff of sulphur to
save you from infection.
The Oxfords have sailed almost a fortnight, and my sister is in town,
which is a great comfort,—for, never having been much together, we are
naturally more attached to each other. I
the illuminations have
conflagrated to Derby (or wherever you are) by this time
. We are
just recovering from tumult and train oil, and transparent fripperies,
and all the noise and nonsense of victory. Drury Lane had a large
M. W.
, which some thought was Marshal Wellington; others, that it
might be translated into Manager Whitbread; while the ladies of the
vicinity of the saloon conceived the last letter to be complimentary to
themselves. I leave this to the commentators to illustrate. If you don't
answer this, I sha'n't say what
you
deserve, but I think
I
deserve a reply.
you conceive there is no Post-Bag but the Twopenny
? Sunburn me, if you are not too bad.
"Madame de Stael treats me as the person whom she most delights to
honour; I am generally ordered with her to dinner, as one orders beans
and bacon: she is one of the few persons who surpass expectation; she
has every sort of talent, and would be universally popular, if, in
society, she were to confine herself to her inferior talents—
pleasantry, anecdote, and literature. I have reviewed her Essay on
Suicide in the last Edinburgh Review: it is not one of her best,
and I have accordingly said more of the author and the subject than of
the work."
Sir J. Mackintosh (
Life
, vol. ii. p. 269).
One result of the illuminations in honour of the battle of
Vittoria (June 21, 1813), which took place July 7, was a great fire at
Woolwich. Moore was at this time living at Mayfield Cottage near
Ashbourne, in Derbyshire.
Moore's
Intercepted Letters, or the Twopenny Post-bag
,
was published, without his name, in 1813.
List of Letters
Contents
July 13, 1813.
Your letter set me at ease; for I really thought (as I hear of your
susceptibility) that I had said—I know not what—but something I should
have been very sorry for, had it, or I, offended you;—though I don't
see how a man with a beautiful wife—
his own
children,—quiet—fame—competency and friends, (I will vouch for a
thousand, which is more than I will for a unit in my own behalf,) can be
offended with any thing.
Do
know, Moore, I am amazingly inclined—remember I say but
inclined
—to be seriously enamoured with Lady A[delaide] F[orbes]
— but this——has ruined all my prospects. However, you know her;
is she
clever
, or sensible, or good-tempered? either
would
do—I scratch out the
will
. I don't ask as to her beauty—that I
see; but my circumstances are mending, and were not my other prospects
blackening, I would take a wife, and that should be the woman, had I a
chance. I do not yet know her much, but better than I did.
I want to get away, but find difficulty in compassing a passage in a
ship of war.
had better let me go; if I cannot, patriotism is the
word—"nay, an they'll mouth, I'll rant as well as they."
Now, what are you doing?—writing, we all hope, for our own sakes.
Remember you must edit my posthumous works, with a Life of the Author,
for which I will send you Confessions, dated "Lazaretto," Smyrna, Malta,
or Palermo—one can die any where.
is to be a thing on Tuesday ycleped a national fête
. The
Regent and —— are to be there, and every body else, who has shillings
enough for what was once a guinea. Vauxhall is the scene—there are six
tickets issued for the modest women, and it is supposed there will be
three to spare. The passports for the lax are beyond my arithmetic.
P. S.—The Staël last night attacked me most furiously—said that I had
"no right to make love—that I had used——barbarously—that I had no
feeling, and was totally
in
sensible to
la belle passion
,
and
had
been all my life." I am very glad to hear it, but did not
know it before. Let me hear from you anon.
"Lady A. F—— was also very handsome. It is melancholy to talk
of women in the past tense. What a pity, that of all flowers, none
fade so soon as beauty! Poor Lady A. F— has not got married. Do you
know, I once had some thoughts of her as a wife; not that I was in
love, as people call it, but I had argued myself into a belief that I
ought to marry, and, meeting her very often in society, the notion
came into my head, not heart, that she would suit me. Moore, too, told
me so much of her good qualities—all which was, I believe, quite
true—that I felt tempted to propose to her, but did not, whether
tant mieux or tant pis, God knows, supposing my proposal
accepted."
(Lady Blessington's
Conversations
, pp. 108, 109).
Lady Adelaide Forbes, whom Byron in Rome compared to the "Belvedere
Apollo," was the daughter of George, sixth Earl of Granard, and his
wife, Lady Selina Rawdon, daughter of the first Earl of Moira. Born in
1789, she died at Dresden, in 1858, unmarried. Lord Moira was Moore's
patron, and, through this connection and political sympathies, Moore was
acquainted with Lord Granard and his family.