The Eternal Schoolboy Again
To Lord Byron. By George Paston and Peter Quennell. (Murray. z2s. 6d.) THIS book, which is a valuable weapon in the hands of those who find themselves irked by the fierce partisanship of the International Byron Society, also provides excellent entertain- ment for people who enjoy a good snigger at the expense of women to whose follies they imagine themselves superior. Yet it does not make a pleasant story, this series of pleading letters—sometimes dignified, more often not—from a varied selection of adoring women to a knave who was incapable of loving anyone but himself. Too often of late have we been invited to take Byron's side against his inamoratas, on the ground that they " brought it on themselves." To anyone not blinded by the Byronic legend, this must appear a one- sided view. Of course, Byron had genius: his intelligence and intuition were brilliant, and his letters masterpieces of epistolary art ; he was intermittently capable of skilful satiri- cal verse and (more seldom) of impulses of reckless gener- osity ; but the fact remains that his life bears the heavy imprint of a vulgar cad. This fact may not be directly perti- nent to his art or his political life, but it can hardly be omitted from consideration of such a book as this, which shows the poet solely as a social individual. Here it is the man we are called upon to contemplate—albeit in a mirror—and very scurvy fellow he appears.
It has often been urged in his favour that the women who pursued him would not take " No " for an answer; that he was " as firm as could be expected," &c. But in matters of this kind it is no use being firm some of the time ; one would feel more sympathy for Byron if he had ever drawn back at the right moment—viz., that at which the woman in question could still have freed herself, heart-whole. (That there always is such a moment is a commonplace of experi- ence.) But this, of course, was just what Byron did not want. A temporary fever is not love ; Byron did not care a jot for most of the unfortunate women who crossed his path: all he really wanted was their scalps. Advancing and retreating, like an accomplished cocotte, he knew by instinct the exact moment at which to appear to yield, in order to make sure of the woman whose company bored him but whose unrequited love was necessary to feed his insatiable vanity. Again and again throughout this book we see him exploiting the same tactics, almost always with success ; and where he is unsuc- cessful—e.g., with Lady Frances Webster—he employs cheap cynicism as a get-out. For, like many men the development of whose emotional life has been arrested at about the age of sixteen, Byron was incurably low-minded. His bouts of well- advertised remorse did not prevent him from taking the view that nobody's feelings were less ephemeral than his own. All was grist that came to his mill, and the more sensitive women suffered for the follies of the less. It nowhere appears that he saw anything odd in making Lady Melbourne free of every- thing poor Lady Frances Webster said or wrote to him. She sent him a lock of her hair and asked for one of his in return, an exchange which provoked the following sneer : —" My proselyte is so young a performer that you [Lady Melbourne] won't wonder at these exchanges and mummeries." Such evil taste is incredible, and one cannot wonder that this man should have had attacks of violent self-hatred. Fearing only indifference in others, unable to get on with people, he got off with them—as Miss Elizabeth Bowen has said of a similar character. And he scorned absolutely no weapon which might help him t..) make son petit effet. Hence the trail of coronets and commonness and cheap melodrama with which his path is strewn. It is character- istic of his infantile sadism that he planned to marry Lady Frances' sister, " out of revenge "—for the former's refusal to be his mistress. Reading his correspondence with Lady Melbourne over this affair, one is irresistibly reminded of Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil. Yet Laclos did not expect admiration for his loathsome hero and heroine ; the romantic era, when evil was to arouse a thrill of ecstasy, had not yet set in over Europe.
The trouble was—and this fascinating book makes it abundantly clear—that Byron really detested any woman with whom his relations were anything but merely friendly. The only people with whom he felt comfortable were either mother- substitutes like Lady Melbourne or boon companions (Augusta belongs to this category)—anyone, in fact, who did not arouse in him a flicker of responsibility. Facility and superficiality being his criteria in these matters, he naturally preferred men to women and dogs to men. The latter he understood, women much less well (he failed utterly to appre- ciate Lady Bessborough); and the mixture of indulgence, insolence, coquetry and outrageous cruelty exhibited towards the subjects of this book is a perfect object-lesson in moral ineptitude.
Many of these letters will be new to most readers. The pathetic Drury Lane actress, Susan Boyce, and Isabella Harvey add important touches—not to the legend, but to the reality ; while even for those familiar with such figures as Elizabeth Pigot, Mrs. Spencer Smith, Lady Falkland, Lady Caroline Lamb, Henrietta d'Hussieres, Mary Chaworth, Miss Mercer Elphinstone, and Claire Clairmont, the adroit editors have fresh light to cast. The housemaid, Susan Vaughan, is perhaps the most amusing of their discoveries. At Newstead, in 1812, the household was at sixes and sevens, as must always be the case where the master of the house is also the lover of the servants. Susan appears to have had a good deal more spirit than her aristocratic rivals, and her letters are humorous as well as loving ; in particular, her report of the gamekeeper's
talk is a priceless document. She kept her end up as best she could, in face of backstairs jealousy and tale-bearing, and her final exit was at least more dignified than Caroline Lamb's. "Height)! " scribbled Byron across one of her letters, when she had been packed off back to Wales.
After turning the last page of this book we feel inclined to echo that exclamation.
Mr. Quennell and the late Miss Symonds have done their work brilliantly, sewing the letters together with a thread of narrative and comment which is admirably skilfuL
EDWARD S AcrvuLE WEST.
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